for here live none but the sly
by flesh and bone telephone
Summary: "I imagine you think yourself quite the clever one." — The woods aren't safe to dream about anymore.
1. Chapter 1

**disclaimer:** please understand coorporate bastards of tvd. my mind is waaay too exhausted to pay heed to avoiding any and all lawsuits.  
><strong>dedication:<strong> for y'all readers. you wanted klaroline, and in past reviews of 'golden as a caesar, wilder than a scoundrel' promised to read more of it in case i ever decided to write more.  
><strong>warning:<strong> _actual_ klaroline. a multi-chapter with a far less stressful wait than 'room on fire', actual in-the-flesh klaroline and too much head cannon involved.  
><strong>notes:<strong> this is more of a thank you gift and a channel to get all my klaroline-show cannon feels out there as corresponding to actual cannon bro. so while you're waiting for klaus to _appear_ in 'room on fire' (and i assure you, you will have to wait a while longer) i give you this as a channel for tuning into his modern sexy rather than for his reluctant-period-drama ass self who i continuously tease about in 'room on fire'.  
><strong>even moar notes:<strong> multi-chapter fic, angsty, _currently_ unresolved sexual tension and an ending that could go _anywhere_. don't worry, won't span over more than five chapters. i'm trying this whole non-au scenario out, be easy on this poor girl. also, any thoughts you have and opinions you are free to leave in a review, i assure you i pour obsessively over them and reply to all that is possible to reply to. painting klaroline as darker, more angry, but afraid i just made it comical in taking itself too seriously. cut me some slack and leave me a review hos, do you know how difficult it is to find adequate imagery and metaphors to encapsule the sheer sexy that is klaus? surely i deserve a little appreciation and even some blatant flattery? also, again, go smack that horrible ho; hannah ('but seriously') with a review, i will not forgive her for her recent cruel update of 'hippopolia' that _beeeetch_. she twists my heart with her cliff hangers, i have half a mind to catch a plane and nag her in person for being such a cruel cruel writer and for giving heart attacks to poor readers all around, but alas. i am too busy angstily awaiting her next update to bother. but honestly, and in all seriousness guys, smack us with reviews, please? i will beg and grovel if it so pleaseth you. don't challenge this, it is truth.

* * *

><p>.<p>

.

.

_How honestly my beggars should be, the song's out of key again.  
>My fools, my things, we're digging the things<br>on the candlelit page again.  
>.<em>

.

.

.

—

* * *

><p>She remembers standing in front of her bedroom mirror, twisting her hair out of its braid so it could flow over her shoulders. If there was one thing no one had like her it was the rich gold of her curls, <em>her princess curls<em> daddy had said, _my little Rapunzel_.

No one at school had that, _even_ if Elena was prettier than her, and Bonnie smarter - neither had the raw co lour of _her_ yellow in their hair.

Daddy said she was _magical._

Caroline drew her fingers through her locks, curling a thick strand around her wrist. Caroline would grow it long, long long, till she could tie it round the post of her bed and vault out of her window, slippers crunching against the vines climbing the wall outside her room. Sliding down until she touched the grass with her feet and ran into the woods free, spreading her arms and spinning in dizzying circles under the light of a moon, laughing a fairy's laugh.

She woke from those dreams happy. She would never tell anyone about them, this was a part of her she didn't need to share with Elena or Bonnie or anyone.

Then daddy leaves, packs his bags with not even a proper goodbye. She realizes he's not coming back the moment her mother decides to pull in more late night shifts that don't allow them to share meals anymore, which is better, perhaps because - because then they don't have to confront the gaping absence at the head of the table where Bill is supposed to sit.

He takes the magic away with him. And Caroline is just Plain Jane Caroline again, dumb blonde, overly enthusiastic, neurotic Caroline who likes boys that always like Elena first and never seems to catch a break. Nothing special about Caroline Forbes at all, her mother isn't part of the PTA, she's not soft around the edges made for bake sales or fund raisers. She's a police woman, harsh and hard and stern. Afraid of her.

She remembers raising a pair of scissors, pressing the blade against her locks. She'll never be free, she thinks. People like her don't get the happy ending, she isn't Rapunzel, she's always going to be second to someone, second to her parents ruin of a marriage, second to Elena, second to _everyone._

She wants to shear the locks away.

Her hand shakes.

She's too weak. _She can't do it_. For a pathetic thought flashes through her mind, her Rapunzel curls are all Caroline _has_. She's never going to leave Mystic Falls, and she can't bear to lop off the only thing she even finds remotely beautiful about herself.

She remembers crying for hours after that, into her little mermaid bedspread. She cries till the pillow is sodden with her tears and her eyes are so red she thinks they're going to melt in her head which pounds and pounds and _pounds -_

She's not Rapunzel. And the woods aren't safe enough to dream about anymore.

* * *

><p><em>Strong, beautiful, full of light<em>. He says.

Nothing about him seems rehearsed, he keeps his eyes on her the whole evening, like he would never dream of looking away.

Caroline's never been looked at like that, so calm and steady and immovable in fascination - and she hates that he's the one to see her in this light, that Klaus _of all people_, the big bad villain, the monster - has the _audacity_ to look at her like she's special. Like she's never ever going to be second best. Someone she deserves is supposed to look at her like that, not Klaus who she abhorrs. Not Klaus who is the cancerous blight on the face of their town.

Not Klaus who she could never ever dream of allowing herself to love.

She snaps at him, because that's what Caroline does to men like him.

If she doesn't break them then she kisses them, and she can't imagine the latter.

She leaves, she hates him. He's the devil. He's the worst man imaginable - he can't pretend like he wants her on his arm, or wants her. _period._ And she knows now that he'll find gaps in her armor, chinks to grasp and claw at, and if she lets him, if she gives him even an inch then he's going to crawl into her heart and never leave.

Caroline knows that about herself, she has the weakness of empathy in her that allows people to occupy her heart and soul for all eternity. She's not easy, never that. How dare he share his past with her, how dare he even appear remotely human, how _dare_ he even ask her about her father like they could ever have something in common. A base in which a feeling can grow from, rooting himself into their similarities when they are _nothing_ alike.

_Strong, beautiful, full of light._

_I enjoy you._ He says, something earnest and too young in his eyes. _I could show you the world, anything you like -_

And she'll be damned if she'll allow that.

* * *

><p><em>DAMON.<em>

The caller ID flashes ominously across the screen of her cell, blinking like the damning viciousness of his too-squinty eyes when he's on one of his 'if you don't do what I tell you, Elena will die and I'll go on a rampage and make YOU dead' totalitarian trips that still causes a deep stir of fear in her.

Caroline purses her lips, knows he won't tolerate being avoided. Knows that deep down she will always be afraid of him.

And now after the ball he's gone back to being an ultimate dick, because it seemed the Salvatores where competeing with eachother in douchebag behavior. Sure, she's learnt to let her guard down a little around Damon, and even tolerated him - in a weird way he'd become her friend, even if he was an ass, and tended to be a little too belittling for his own good.

However, this Damon was hurt and angry and a _dick._ And due to the post-original ball attitude and his Elena-rebound-turnabout way of acting out, he wasn't her friend this week.

No matter how nice Damon plays them these days, there's _still_ the crooked streak of remembrance against Caroline's brain of the days she'd been too weak, too human to resist his cruelty, the days she'd been a _pawn._

Damon doesn't give a damn about her, and he's calling her because he needs shit from her. _Again._

She answers, pausing in her rummage through her closet with a huff. "What." She snaps, determined not to make this easy.

"An opportunity to make yourself useful, you should thank me honey," Damon quips, "Your plot relevance has been practically non-existent recently."

"My tolerance for your bullshit even more so." She grits, mood perpetually ruined.

Time to be used and abused to serve another person's fucking purposes _again_, don't get Caroline wrong. She loves Elena and she'd do anything to protect her friends, but it seems that whenever she even _tries_ the story ends with her taped to some torture chair, caged like an animal at the mercy of some hill billy werewolves or presented as the main feature in yet another nefarious witch ritual that requires her as a sacrifice. _Again._

Damon loves giving her these opportunities, she thinks that he has sick way of regarding his life-threatening gestures as a good will, like he thinks he's doing her a favour, like she should be thanking him. _Why Damon_, she almost snorts, _you want me to bend over backwards for you again? Well, why the hell not. It's not like I have things to do. My dignity? Take that as well, why don't you._

"No need to let loose your pent-up bitch on me, Blondie. " Damon drawls. And _then,_ "Elena's going to die."

Caroline breathes in sharply. "_What?_"

"Interested now? Isn't that just _dandy_."

And she's hearing about this _now?_ Typical. She's _always_ the last to know about _everything_. "What's happening?"

"Don't busy your brain on that, us Salvabros got that part planned out. We do need you, however, to do something else for us."

_Anything,_ Caroline almost breathes. Cold dread falling over her, her fingers close tight, knuckles white around the blue dress _he_'d given her what seemed like ages ago. "Spit it out."

She can practically hear his grin though the line. "Doll up, Barbie. We need the big bad hybrid distracted, and you're as shiny as they come."

_No._ Caroline gasps, "Oh _hell_. Damon, what are you going to fucking _do_ -"

"Never hassle a hair about it, you just get _him_ out of the Grill."

"Damon," She hisses, dead-in-a-threat by her voice "Damon-"

"Don't keep us waiting. Be there in five."

And he cuts off the line, _hangs_ up on her.

Caroline flings her phone across the room, barely stifling a cry of feminine rage. Why does _she_ have to be the one to do this? And then, furiously astounded by the turn of events, _how in the hell did Damon even know?_

She doesn't like this plan, it reeks of skank and it's just goddamn sneaky and immoral and _trashy._ It's a last-ditch attempt at deception, a flimsy plan that she's not sure she's cut out for. Caroline doesn't want this to be what she amounts to. It's not her _style_

It's not her style _becaus_e she's not the kind of girl who tricks men with a dazzling smiles and manipulates, _at least not anymore_. Even if they're evil maniacs like Klaus, it doesn't exactly make her feel like a good person.

However, there's no time to loose.

_Fuck this,_ Caroline snarls, tearing off her pajama pants. She viciously kicks off her slippers and rummages through her cupboard, wondering where in the hell she kept her screw-me heels and if the appropriate shade of lipstick required for being a distraction-slut would be rouge-sex red. All in all, he'd be an idiot not to sniff the deception off her miles off. She begs her damning excuse for 'lucky' stars to please please _please_ let this work, and doesn't take more than a second to consider that he'll probably hate her forever.

_Good,_ the pragmatist in her says, _he should._

But her stomach roils, and when she surveys her reflection in the mirror the shivers still crawl over her skin.

* * *

><p>If life doesn't suck enough already with her guilty conscience guilt-tripping her, and Bonnie left shaken and more of a wreck than Caroline had ever expected for such a strong and steady person like her to be, it definitely sucks even harder when Damon insists on driving her to school. She doesn't have much of a choice, someone's <em>mysteriously<em> let the air out of her tires while she'd been grabbing a bag of O-neg from the freezer.

She glares at him, it's _way_ too early in the morning for this shit.

Damon rolls down the window, squints his Squint Of Skeptic Mistrust© at her house. Bonnie and Abby are still in there, and even if Damon thinks he's a ballsy bastard he's not going to risk walking in to face the emotional turmoil that lurks within the witches hearts right now, it would give him too much to feel guilty about. And guilt isn't exactly trending much for Damon these days because he's intent on proving to everyone what an asshole he can be when they all know he's really just a whiny sore bitch for the heart of a girl whose love he will never seem close enough to have.

"Oh right, _I_ don't get to throw a bitch storm when you mess with my car. But the moment I spill something on your hideously outdated carpet -"

"It's Persian," he almost glowers. "and older than you, Blondie."

"- you suddenly go bat shit crazy over making me clean it up." Caroline huffs.

Damon reaches over with hand still clamped around the wheel and pushes her door open, intent on ignoring her protests. "Don't you dare get any of that packaged stuff on these smooth leather recliners, this is a limited edition baby."

She stomps her feet, rolls her eyes and swears like a sailor.

Stefan would be scandalized.

You know, if he was still her best friend, and not an angsting mean ripper.

They're cruising over the smooth tarmac, Caroline rolls down her window and glowers at the gloomy scenery outside. The sky is dark and intent on teasing them about what time it's going to stop being a coy bitch and just rain already. She's not doing this whole tolerance thing with Damon, and she's not going to bother pretending to be grateful for his presence because he wouldn't be here if Elena didn't think he needed to be, and if he thinks he's enough to keep her safe from whatever backlash Klaus might have planned for her then he's an idiot.

She sips her O-neg and daintily spills some on the dashboard when the car goes over a bump. Damon glowers. "The hell is your problem," he sighs, and overlooks it. He kind of realizes he deserves it.

Caroline's not done yet. Oh, fuck _no_, she's not done. She pushes the chair back and props her boots onto the vinyl streaked dashboard, clacking her heels as she crosses them over eachother, sipping on her O-neg like a fucking BOSS.

Damon's jaw tightens, and his eyes burn with barely restrained serial-killer feels. "Very funny." He growls. And then they stop by Elena's house, much to her surprise. "Don't make me demote you to sitting in the back like a toddler, Baby Vampire."

Caroline watches Elena run out of her house, Alaric's taking a few day's off from school to sort his drama out and Caroline suspiciously realizes that she is correct in the assumption that Elena's tires are slashed as well. Seriously, Damon's ability to divert their transportation into accommodating his safety compulsive tendencies are not at all endearing, this is not what knights in shining armor do.

Elena tears the door open and plops into the seat behing Damon so she doesn't have to look at him, she doesn't say anything. Glares at the back of his seat with something Caroline would call murder if the sexual tension in the car wasn't so goddamned _exasperating._

She forgives Elena for not saying hi, no one's in the mood to tolerate Damon right now. Especially when he's infringing on their ability to commute to school like a professional asshole while simultaneously pretending he doesn't care, which is basically compromised by the purpose of his driving them to school in the first place.

It's kind of sad, because baby sitting body guard duty was normally Stefan's deal. She's kind of sure that too-cool-for-school Damon is going to park outside their library and obsessively wait for them like a soccer mom so he can drive them back home. But then she's pretty sure that will ruin this whole I'm-a-dick facade he's got back on, so he'll probably ditch their asses to go get wasted at the Grill because he's such a classy man like that.

"Car pooling, fantastic." Caroline mutters. "Why don't we pick up Matt while we're at it."

Elena's washed her hair, and the scenery outside is practically stormy. If Caroline can smell the strawberry shampoo, she's sure that Damon's crazed with it. God, these people are so _pathetic._

"Car problems?" She prompts to her friend.

"Yeah." Elena says, tight mouthed and taught.

It's kind of sad. She wonders how early Damon got up to just slash their tires and isn't not sure whether or not to call him out on being such a pussy-whipped moron for that, or throw her now empty O-neg bag at his face which is doing that uncomfortably disconcerted annoyed pissed etcetera etcetera twitch it does when he's confused by his emotions.

"What are you thinking about as the theme for prom?" Elena gives in, she doesn't have it in her to be so rude as to avoid making talk with Caroline, even if she's trying to ignore Damon in the process.

"The 70's." Caroline chirps back happy, because someone _finally_ asked. Her job as student council rep, and prom committee wonder is still important, being a vampire doesn't make any of that take a back seat.

Damon snorts.

Two sharp glares are thrown his way. Caroline's mouth thins. "What is it smartass?"

"That party's going to be crashed."

Well. She can't blame him for that assumption. Wherever a high school shindig goes down shit is bound to hit the fan because of yet another piece of Vampire Drama. "Not if I'm tight with security, no members allowed over twenty except for chaperones. Which are handpicked." She's thought this out perfectly, no Originals are going to ruin this night for her. "It's not going to be crashed."

Damon should be looking at the road, but he gives her one of his cocky _hello, have you _not_ heard of compulsion foo'_ looks that she wants to punch him for. But Elena is a human, and in the backseat, and if Damon veers off the road because Caroline decided to adjust his face's bone structure then she'd probably end up getting hurt in the ensuing car crash.

That would be lame.

"Believe you me," Damon says. "If there's a party to be crashed then you bet your bottom dollar it's going to be crashed by some bad news originals."

"Good news originals," it takes a moment for Caroline and Damon to realize that it's Elena who's talking, chipping in coldly. "would be the ones that offer cunnilingus, and have no standards."

_Oh fuck it,_ Caroline wants to roll her eyes. They're having the Rebekah sex talk _again._

"Standards schmanders, if you've got them then you're bound to loose 'em. Isn't that right, Caroline?"

That's about all Caroline's about to take, Pacifist Mode? _Off._ "Damon," she says with saccharine sweetness. "Don't make me strangle you with the strap of my bag."

"Fine, Caroline Forbes. Jeez, with your boyfriend gone you must be lacking action. You're no fun at all."

"I long for the days when I can be as exciting as the one and only Damon Salva_whore._" Caroline snipes back, just as immature.

That actually gives him pause, if only for a moment. "_Salvawhore_." He tastes the word on his tongue, "Wow. Seriously?"

"Shut the fuck up and drive." Elena hisses, and she sounds scary.

Damon has no smartass retort for that, looking somewhat shocked. Silence descends and they drive the rest of the way to school with little disaster at all.

Pissed Elena is just that much of a terror..

* * *

><p>Peace lasts about a week. which is a record of sorts, by the way.<p>

* * *

><p>Klaus stands in the light of her porch like a boy would.<p>

She's surprised, she hadn't expected him to come and confront her. She'd honestly expected to be murdered in her sleep the very night she pulled that stunt of hers Damon had demanded of her. Caroline had been waiting nervously for a week, expecting him and lecturing herself that she was stupid to even expect him because if he hadn't murdered her by _now_ he'd probably chosen to leave her alone forever. She's Caroline Forbes, she doesn't get to occupy someone's head for long enough to matter.

It's naive and so so _Caroline_ of her to think because since when do things work out that way for her?

Klaus doesn't just walk away from a fight. Agitation seeps low and cold in his eyes, like waters churning underneath the claw of a storm. Klaus hands slipped into pockets, standing at ease when she comes down the stairs with her bathrobe drawn around her shoulders, wet hair sticking against the curve where her jaw slopes against her throat.

Klaus watches her warily through the mosquito net of her door, she's not sure what to make of him. He has an invitation, he could have come in anytime, upended her world, killed her against her carpeted bedroom floor and snarl about her stupid trinkets and baubles and all her vanity laid against the dresser drawers. Even if he hates her, he's been taught his manners.

It's laughable, that murderers can remember their courtesies.

Caroline remembers summer nights and Matt who was _hers_, Matt climbing in through her window like her small town prince charming with the small town smile that Caroline had been perfectly content and happy with - Matt who was _right_ for her.

And now _Klaus_ stands on her porch, and it's too much. _Boys_ stand on her porch, monsters don't _get_ the honor of being drawn in the watery light thrown there, with the swinging porch chair her dad built rocking and creaking in the breeze to blanket over the sound of his breathing. He's not _allowed_ to stand sinister and brimming with murder in the place where all the _normal_ good boys of her life have stood, yet there he is, tainting the world she knows, blotting the edges black like ink spilled across her life's manuscript. And just about as impossible to get rid of.

It's a biting cold outside, she tucks her sleeves over her wrists, holds them down tightly with nails cutting against her palms and arms closed snug around her. She doesn't want to let him in, she doesn't want to open the door. If she does, she knows, there's no way he'll be walking out of her life anytime soon.

He takes in the sight of her, her face cleansed for bed, hair loose around her shoulders, skin flushed red from the hot water, soft smelling and blue eyes both fierce and yet vulnerable, very aware of the situation. Nervous.

She thinks about Tyler a thousand miles away, probably in Canada or something. It's a full moon, and she almost winces imagining the shift he's going through, the painful reconstruction of bone, the resetting of his whole structure that had so chilled her the first time and never ceased to frighten her after. He's out there, for _her_. He's her _boyfriend._ He wouldn't have _needed_ to have gone away if it wasn't for Klaus.

But it's late, and her anger doesn't stand a chance right now.

Caroline makes no move to open the door. There's a sullen sort of despair in her eyes, staring back at him and waiting.

"I imagine you think yourself quite the clever one." He says.

She almost looses the words over the hush of the cold outside. He sounds so very grave, moonlight etches the shoulders of his jacket silver, places a cold hand against the stubble of his cheek - he's not here for her so much as see her as to _remind_ her of him. Remind her how he could snuff her out like a match and that he's the gale to freeze her down if he ever desired to.

He smiles a small depreciating thing. It cuts across his cheeks, dimples and twists her insides up. She doesn't know if that smile's directed at her or at himself, who exactly he's more disappointing in, him or her? Because if Klaus can feel disappointment, she knows that there's nothing more potent to come after than his fury.

Klaus looks up finally, and his eyes hold none of that warmth, that young almost endearing _want_ of her. They're cold and precisely unforgivable. _Nik never does forgive people who end up disappointing him._

Caroline holds her arms around herself tighter, feels vulnerable, naked.

Her mother is sleeping upstairs. Klaus looks up, a single glance above that tells her he's aware as well. She doesn't know what he intends, but his eyes come back to her, and it's too much like a promise to sit easy with her. It's too _Klaus_ to ever sit easy with her.

"What do you want?" She asks in a low hush. She's frightened of what he can do, who he can hurt. She understands, God, Caroline _understands_ - but she _can't_ be sorry. She will _never_ be sorry. She hopes he doesn't notice the tremble in her voice, the emptiness that accompanies the gesture of raising her chin. She doesn't have enough of a tough front now to be any use.

"Only to make things clear, _Caroline._" Klaus's jaw tightens, there's a low dark look in his eyes that reminds her of something especially mean. "Are you listening?"

This is not Klaus the artist with his bright eyes asking, _courting_ her. This is _Niklaus_, the Original, the man whose brother she just almost killed - well, had a hand in trying to kill anyway and would have succeeded if things didn't get spectacularly fudged up in typical Salvatore fashion.

Caroline doesn't feel all too well about her part in the plan. _A blonde distraction_, Damon had called it. She had hated it, but it had been so long since she'd been included in the daily save-Mystic-Falls meetings and plans that she'd taken it, taken what she could get. Caroline wanted to help protect Elena too. Honestly, because Damon and Stefan were just bound to mess everything up because of the dramatic machinations of their weird love triangle and Bonnie couldn't hope to do everything herself, especially now with the situation with Abby...- so she'd done it, Caroline had _used_ him.

That made her sick, made her skin crawl.

But it had to be done.

Next time Damon asks something so stupidly cliché of her, Caroline vows, she's going to tell him to suck _balls_, because _fuck it_, she wasn't going to be _that_ girl again. She wasn't that girl and she wasn't like Damon who had used her body and fucked with her mind and made her go around the whole of fucking Mystic Falls with a Gilbert compass to scope out blood sucking bat shit crazy motherfucking vampires gone wild like a mindless love slave.

Next time if _anyone_ was going to be seducing Klaus they could send _Alaric_. Because Klaus sure as hell wasn't going to fall for Caroline's swishy walk again after _that_ night.

_He hates me._ Caroline thinks, internally flinching before remembering that she's stupid for being a neurotic bitch for still caring about what people think about her. Even evil hybrids like Klaus.

She feels like shit, she's been waiting for the backlash for days now. Now that it's come she doesn't know whether to be relieved or afraid, she's actually more of the latter than the former but - _here_ he is and it's all here and now and she'd rather just get it all out in the open. Heart tremulous and beating on reflexive memory. It's about time he ended this tango. She wants to steel herself against him, but she's not sure she can, she's not exactly feeling very pro-Caroline herself these days.

_Beautiful, strong, full of light._

_That's an ideal_, she wants to say, _and now I've taken it from you._

Caroline sighs instead, shoulders slumping. "The floor's all yours."

Klaus cuts a look behind her shoulder, Caroline doesn't dare ask him in, even though he _has_ an invite. He stares with jaw tight at the spot near her head, as if the very look of her makes him sick with disdain. "You made your decision that night you sought to fool me, and I have made mine."

Caroline can't meet his eyes, she's not sure how she'll react if she looks up. How her face might betray her. So she sort of just stares at her feet, waits for him to be done so he can go away and her chest can stop clamping around her lungs so much.

"You touch my family again, any of you - and it will be the end."

_What a fucking hypocrite,_ she can feel the heat climb into her face, and she exhales through her nose. Tries not to fume and fails phenomenally. "God, you are _full_ of it."

"You're as dumb as a board if you're thinking of talking down to me now, girl." Klaus bites back, harsh as a cut of tequila, a frothing anger burning his insides, held back by a bare strain. "I admit, I found that riveting before, but in light of recent events it's no longer as amusing."

She feels like she's been slapped, stares at him completelely dumbstruck with fury. "I was protecting my friends!"

"Of course. Performing your duty as a distraction." He replies coldly, sarcasm lacing his voice. Even more arsenic than Damon ever was. "Is that what you allow yourself to be reduced to? Bait? A pretty shiny thing to catch my eye so I can give my back to their knives?"

He has a lot of nerve saying that to her. Caroline is _not_ a distraction, and sure the group leaves her out of the loop a lot and even if she's been delegated to distraction mission slut duty, his saying it out loud, _putting it in words_ makes it even harder to stomach. Her heart is beating, hot and heavy, it feels like a stone about to burst through her throat.

"Yes!" She throws out, her life-preservation skills abandoning her in one wildly lucid moment of rage. Rage unlike any she has ever felt before. "If that's what it takes! This is _war,_ this was war the day you decided to bring your hybrid shit all up in this town, the day you decided to mess around with my friends and make my best friend your personal hybrid spawning blood bag. Long before you sired my boyfriend into your little puppy slave, and long before the thought of possibly even making me _not_ hate you down to your very fucking _socks_ dared cross your mind. So yes, you self-righteous _bastard_," There's a burning in her cheeks, and her throat is so so r_aw_. She could cut him open and not hesitate to murder him if she could, right here, right about fucking _now_. "I'd do it a thousand times over. Even if I have to resort to underhanded means, even if it meant dragging myself through fire and back, even if the greatest of fucking indignities were linked in with the scheme I would do it! I would do it! They're my family and I'd do it a thousand times over. How _dare_ you pretend like you're the only one who has a right to protect your family! _Fuck_ you!"

For a moment he's astonished by how much she's said, but if she's a storm, he's the slaughter. And he doesn't have to raise his voice to make that come across.

"You know nothing," Klaus hisses, murderous. "You're an only child, a mere babe barely born yesterday. Do you know how long I've lived? How long I've fed on fools like you? What I do to those who even think they can deceive me?"

_Still fooled you, didn't I_. She wants to heave back. But she's not sure where a confession like that could lead.

Caroline wets her lips, tries to talk a little more calmly. But only manages to be quieter, the scorching heat of her anger still burrows under her words. "You're angry, and you're hurt - but if you're expecting me to go to my knees and beg forgiveness then you've got another thing coming, mister."

"If _you_ expect me to just overlook this, then you're as big a fool as they make you out to be."

"I'm not sorry." Caroline breathes, the hurricane spinning in her chest. She feels light headed, too angry to be wise, too angry to be afraid. "I'm not sorry."

Klaus presses his hand sharply against the door, as if he means to throw it down. Crash through the pine wood, and break the door frame into a splintering mess to fall through to the floor boards on her house. Taught as a bowstring, drawn like a killer - she can make out every calloused fingertip, the veins pulsing inside of them. Feels her heart climb into her throat, placed for tearing out.

He leans in and it's like there's nothing in the world separating them, the door is too flimsy to be a barrier, that even a million miles of distance would be too tame to keep him away.

"Take," Klaus says, menace made in a whisper, speaks words like steel cloaked in silk. "a second shot at what you did that night and I assure you, Caroline. You won't be as lucky."

Caroline bares her teeth and leans in. Her whisper fogging through the mosquito net, hot on his frost cold lips. "Bite me."

She thinks she sees him smile.

* * *

><p>—<p>

.

.

.

_My moon and me, not skirty swift bean - it's the dirtiest clean I know.  
>My care, my co-lead barber I know<br>there's nowhere to go  
>there's no where to go<br>but on  
><em>

.

.

.

* * *

><p><strong>end notes:<strong> am aware i will probably inevitably regret this later, and delete it from the face of the internet by morning because i'm feeling way to 'blegh' about things right now. because klaroline is doomed because julie plec is the white queen of narnia and she's just too mean to grant all of my klaroline feels in cannon. falling asleep on my laptop keys, and yes, that song be belongin' to feist. and i'm too tired to care right now. i love you all?

also, tbc.


	2. Chapter 2

**disclaimer:** blah blah blah whatever, kiss my ass you goddamned tv show. i am SO mad at you right now for what you did last episode.  
><strong>dedication:<strong> for hannah, who is now in the national youth service and isn't coming back until forever. and you, YOU readers you awesome who reviewed, the feedback was overwhelming and i'm so grateful. i'd like to apologize to anyone if i haven't replied to their review, i've been so ridiculously busy with home dramas and kitchen dramas and school dramaz that my whole life is a drama. i always get back to everyone who ever leaves me a review, i've just had a hard time doing so this last month? forgiveness? please? perhaps some bromance will do the trick?  
><strong>warning:<strong> snarkiness, banter, a little more lighthearted than the last chapter. i had so much smexy banter planned for this chapter, SO much, but i have to leave it for the next chapter because of, ugh, pacing. yes, yes, i'm just as annoyed as you are. lyrics credited to atomic tom.  
><strong>even moar notes:<strong> did anyone watch the last episode? BECAUSE LIKE, WHAT THE FUCK.

* * *

><p>.<p>

.

.  
>You don't have to say - I know what you wanted - You don't have to stay,<br>I know what's keeping you here.  
>Because tonight's the night you make the same mistake,<br>And you give and you get-  
>(in the wall, in the way)<p>

.

.

.

—

* * *

><p>"Because he's obsessed with you," Damon pronounces, smirking blithely. An adult explaining obvious reason to a child for the hundredth time. There was the easy condescension of his eyes, the incredulous wrinkle of his nose that someone like Klaus could be so disappointingly foolish in choosing Vampire Barbie of <em>all<em> people. And then the knowledge that he'd already tapped that (which apparently made him an authority on her love life) was enough to fuel his smugness for the rest of her undead life. Of course subsequently knowing that she knew exactly what he was thinking in that little rat-brain of his made him immensely pleased.

Narcissist.

Damon tosses the crossbow from hand to hand, raising his eyebrows, gloating bright blues.

Caroline folds her arms over her lavender cardigan. "Damon," she says patiently "I'm well aware that you don't give a damn about the lives your plans to keep Elena safe inevitably destory."

"Oh, okay, I'm glad we got out that little misunderstanding out of the way. Because do people really think being subtle about not caring is not supposed to be a thing of mine?" Damon snorts, eyebrows dancing incredulously. "We've already been over the whole the Ends justifies the means thing, it's kind of my M.O"

This was not how she wanted to spend her Saturday morning, bantering with Damon was emotionally exhausting. Caroline closed her arms tighter around herself on the subtext of it being chilly out this early, rather than being seriously creeped out about being alone with another vampire in the woods they normally used to dump the corpses their line of work required them to dispose of. Seriously, Mystic Falls has the highest death toll ever, and not once has Caroline come across her mother batting an eyelash about dealing with it.

"You have as much subtlety as an Elephant in heat." Hey, she still knew how to be a mean girl, getting fangs hadn't changed that. "And your M.O is pretty much behaving like a complete hobag."

He smiled, tight and mock-sympathetic. "Watching all that National Geographic ever strain that noggin of yours?"

Caroline grit her teeth, and almost stomped her foot. He was impossible. She'd been a slave to his impulsive plans for too long, for once she'd like Damon to come out with a proper 100% thought out plan rather than some last minute, half assed, impromptu pull of the wrist and _voila_ - Elena is safe, but at the behest of a tantamout deathtoll because Damon loves _winging_ it. Damon's just too cool to plan anything, Damon's contingency plans are contingency plans formed on the spot that really need their own contingency plans.

She guessed it was true what they said about fools rushing in, but right now they couldn't afford to depend on improvisation. She'd rather die because a foolproof plan failed, rather than die because of some loop or glaring hole in an impromptu one. That way it wouldn't be so spectacularly in vain.

And if Caroline despised doing anything, it was wasting her life on a failed plan.

Despite the apparent ease of Damon's smirk, there was a muscle jumping in his jaw. Before Caroline could pinpoint it and harangue him about it he was already flinging the crossbow to her.

To? Oh, I'm sorry, Caroline thought cattily, At.

Caroline barely grazed it with her fingers to keep it from toppling to the leafy floor. The canopy of branches above hid the cloudy sky from sight, and it was all doom and gloom, a sardonic glee in Damon's eyes. "So, I gather you want me to seduce him. Again."

"Jeez, you make it sound like it's herculean, Blondie. Just keep him distracted," there Damon went speaking to her like she was two. "Flash a little leg, swing in some boobage, and you're clear. The worst you could do is sleep with him."

"The worst I could do, Damon," She visibly bristled, "is die."

"Well excuse me while I debate a worse fate, having sex with Klaus, or being killed by Klaus? sex or death? And folks, how about that - Miss Forbes has decided to put on her priority panties," Damon gave one of his lazy one-shouldered shrugs, leaning against the tree like he lived there. "Can't say I blame you. It's the accent isn't it?

Damon wasn't being funny, that kind of humor didn't tickle much. It packed a punch, given her history and his. Their history.

He hadn't had any trouble of seducing her when he'd first met her, she'd been a ditzy cheerleader desperate for anything she could get. Stefan hadn't wanted her, so his brother had had to do, right? Elena could have the younger one and Caroline would have the older more mysterious and experienced one, for a while Caroline had believed herself a loyal girlfriend. For a while she would have done anything Damon said, she doubted he'd even needed to compel her most of the time.

She wouldn't ever forget their history, and she didn't appreciate Damon just tossing it out there when he never did apologize or care about treating her like shit on the bottom of his shoes in the first place.

"He'll see right through it." Caroline tried not to sound so desperate. "He'll see right through it and -" Her mouth clamped shut, she pressed her tongue against the roof of her mouth as if that would help her keep her silence better. She hadn't told him about that night with Klaus threatening her on her porch, sinful mouth drawling out words that sent shivers of fear down her spine and something else that scared her too much for her to acknowledge. "Damon, he _knows_ -"

Damon looks serious, almost as sober as she's ever seen him. He studies her, and she's afraid he'll know there's something she's so obviously not telling him. That he'll sniff this out as easily as he used to when she was still human.

"If he sees right through it," Damon deliberates with what seems to be grave import, "make sure you're wearing some nice underwear - I do remember a particular pair of polka dot panties, wonderful set, a wise purchase, Barbie - hey, don't scowl at me, best piece of -"

Caroline lunges.

* * *

><p>Having Damon take her seriously is about as doable as fetching the moon, and she wants to glower because no one doesn't care how she feels about this.<p>

Okay okay, she needed to kill Klaus to save Tyler in the first place - she understood that motivation, on her part. But she has a feeling that even if that wasn't the case it would still be up to the Salvatore duo to drag her ass into their shit anyway.

Alright, she's not being fair. It's her shit too, because it's _Elena_ - her best friend, her amigo, her menstrual sistah and all that jazz. And that's enough motivation.

The point is - Caroline reasoned - that _I'm_ the metaphorical booty call, Damon and Stefan only mobbed her when they conveniently needed shit done.

_And now I'm renting out my ass to a crazy psychopath who can't decide between sexing me or killing me._

Caroline sighed into her bedspread, staring at her phone after an hour of listening to Tyler's few voice messages, the loss of him was like an ever present tug in her gut. She was angry at Klaus for putting them in this situation, but she couldn't pretend that his attention or rather _lack_ of attention hadn't been bothering her.

She hadn't seen him since that night on her porch, when he'd come and threatened her then vamoosed on the spot.

He was totally planning something, or he just didn't give a shit.

Sure, Damon hadn't any qualms about 'taking one for the team' - or whatever fancy spin he liked to put on it to justify sleeping with a complete blood slut, but Caroline wasn't ready to take _that_ kind of hit for the team. She had standards, and a boyfriend, and Klaus had killed Jenna and pulled all his nasty hybrid drama into her town to turn her life into some sort of sick twisted soap opera.

Right now she couldn't even think about it, because Alaric - her history teacher - had killed her dad.

She wanted to hurt him, so badly. But she couldn't - it wasn't his fault, Elena kept saying desperately and for a minute Caroline had hated the doppelganger so fiercely she couldn't even breathe. Because Elena's got her parental father figure, but who's going to be Caroline's stand-in dad? She's lost her dad in circumstances that wouldn't have taken place if it weren't for people like Elena and the Salvatores and at the core of it all, seated on a throne, Klaus.

No matter which way she looked at it, all shit trails could be traced back to him.

Every miserable situation, every trophy for the grave, everyone - it was all his fault.

Klaus was the true monster, and Alaric was only her history teacher who cared about her. Alaric hadn't known what he was doing.

But for a long minute Caroline had thought him - _Alaric_ - the monster, and all that pleading good deeds on the behalf of the likes of Damon and Stefan was looking for innocence where there was none.

She regretted it later, she was ashamed of thinking of her friends that way, especially Elena who really didn't deserve it, but Caroline had still _thought_ it. She'd still been bitter about it.

She couldn't do anything about it.

But she could do something about Klaus, she had to.

* * *

><p>The universe was having a grand ol' time on her behalf, she was sure. Because she couldn't really do anything about Klaus now, could she? Because getting Klaus dead was a stupendously great way to go about killing Tyler as well. Hauling Damon back to the boarding house isn't pretty, but Stefan's the pretty boy so it's only fitting that Caroline doesn't bother helping him with the brotherly burden.<p>

So what if she's bitter? He hasn't said two words to her since he had his humanity revoked or whatever.

However, all semblance of a cold front evaporates at the sight of Damon. Looking at him hurts, and not in the sexy romance novel way - their resident snark looks like he's been through hell and back, dragged through several bear traps on the way back, with a first class room at abu ghraib. What, Caroline's well informed, she'd wanted to be a tv presenter like that prick Jenna used to date okay, she knew where the hell abu ghraib was.

Jeez.

She helped heft him up the stairs, Stefan on one side, Caroline on the other. It would be faster just to vamp-up to his room, but she has a feeling moving at neck break speed with Damon in his condition was bound to shake loose some barely healed arteries and pull something like blood and bone onto the floor. Damon keeps muttering something weakly, and it takes Caroline about a second to realize it's _not the carpet _or you _asshat _and _how are we even related?, _peppered with more drowsy _Not the carpet. Not the carpet. Not the goddamn carpet you goddamn motherfu-_

It would be funny if looking at Damon didn't make anyone want to wince.

They toss him onto his pampered pearl duvets, and he lolls sleepily at them, as if to ask them if they're in his room for sexy time. Hey, she isn't making this up, but 'sexy time' is the same exact word he uses. Stefan looks mildly disturbed which of course gives Damon the kick desired.

"Come on bitches, make me a sandwich."

Stefan closes the door against that obnoxious holler, deep in broodyland by the looks of things. His hand still rests on the doorknob, as if he can't decide whether to lock Damon in or go back inside to keep an eye on his brother. He looks like an indecisive boy again, all blurry lines and so much more miserable than his years. It makes Caroline ache for her best friend - Stefan who said no one would ever hurt her again, who cared about people, who used to smile, who had a Tuesday-look -

It's stupid to want things that are in the past.

"I guess," Caroline clears her throat. "Is there anything you need?"

Stefan shakes his head, still frowning deeply to himself. "He just needs a few bloodbags and some rest."

"Are you going to be alright?"

"He won't be too hard to manage, not more than he usually is. Don't worry."

Caroline's voice shakes, just a little, only at first. "That's not what I'm _asking_, Stefan," she tells him, and he looks at her for the first time in what feels like years. Perplexed green eyes, bright as jade, deceptively stoney yet easy to fracture as jade is. "Are you going to be alright?"

He breathes, a deep inhalation.

Caroline studies the barely perceptible shifts over his features, the resignation, the weariness, even the fear. She sees it all.

He gives her a small, faithless smile. Raises a shoulder, shrugs.

* * *

><p>Bonnie is a mess, this broken trembling wreck of tears and choking sobs that makes her bewildered because - because Caroline always thought she was strong, but Bonnie has always been the bastion, the steeling resolve, and she's never seen someone as fierce and powerful as Bonnie be so completely undone.<p>

The plan had gone to hell, Damon had gotten his ass bloodied in some BDSM torture scene involving bear traps. The link was broken, dissolved, vamoosed. Alaric had killed her dad, Jeremy was in danger, every vamp made could be wiped out if they killed the wrong one, and Tyler - _Tyler_ could be on the Salvatore Shit-list for all the good killing Klaus would do him.

And oh yeah, Klaus was going to kill them if they didn't hand over the last stake.

She rubbed a hand up and down the witch's back, crooning softly and uttering useless nothings and affirmations of 'I'm here, I'm here'. The worst thing she could do is tell Bonnie that it's OK when things have never been _OK_ in Mystic Falls, and now they certainly never will be. Bonnie and Caroline had always been close, but Bonnie and Elena were even closer, so it was surprising to find Bonnie on her doorstep with her arms tucked around herself instead of at Elena's. If this was supposed to be some sort of petty victory, it tasted foul on Caroline's tongue.

Huddled in her bed, Bonnie swore. "I'll kill him." Her chest heaved, and her eyes glistened bright as stars. "I have to, I _have_ to."

No, you _can't._ Caroline wanted to say, to shake her, to say _no_. You can't, because if you do then Tyler will _die_ - and I _love_ him, Bonnie. You _can't_ kill him. _It isn't fair_, and maybe she's not as above wallowing in self-pity as she thinks, but Caroline doesn't think this is a curveball any of them were prepared for, and again, it's the curveball that screws her over the most from everyone else but Elena. Because they're not just talking about Klaus's life here, Tyler will die.

Caroline bit her bottom lip down and hard, never correcting Bonnie, because she realized that things had always been bigger than her and Tyler, she'd always known. But this isn't fair.

There's someone on her porch at three in the morning, long after Bonnie's cried herself into deep miserable sleep. An interruption to Caroline's posthumous analysis of the ceiling and the craptwist that was her life.

Her heart somersaults and her guts churn, she thinks it's Klaus, and it's strange how she can expect and dread seeing him in the same thought altogether. If it's Klaus he's here either to kill her, (because, hello, she might have not assaulted him recently but the whole stakes ploy was something she was a part of. So that warranted her being murdered) or to - to, well, she has no idea. Gloat? He seems like the type. But he lives waaay on the otherside of town, and that would be both parts incredibly lame and unnerving patheticaly sweet in a murdering psycopath kind of way for him to make the long trip here so he can stand on her porch and rub it in her face.

She doesn't want to see him, really. She's pissed off as hell, because _she_ can't kill him anymore, can she? He's worked his way around every corner, twisted himself into every niche of her life and it's - tears smart at her eyes,_ it's not fair_. Because all she's been trying to _do_ was kill him, and that still never worked, nothing _ever_ worked from day one. And she hates that she's a little bit relieved at that, that they didn't actually succeed in frying his ass because if they had then Tyler wouldn't be alive. And she's not supposed to feel anything like gratefulness for him being so brilliantly clever in thwarting them all, because _Klaus_ turned Tyler, Klaus almost tore them apart, Klaus wants her and she's spoken for and he won't quit. Not really, anyway.

Caroline curled onto her side with a miserable sigh, looking into her friend's sleep worn face, the tear tracks still glistening on Bonnie's cheeks.

_You're nothing but trouble_, she thought , _nothing but trouble._

She made her way downstairs, quiet as not to wake Bonnie. It's Damon, who has to be her least favourite person alive, she wondered why he hadn't just swooped in like some pretentious Gotham Knight to tell her what's what - but it strikes her that he's not exactly on speaking terms with Bonnie, even if he lolls on her porch like an unrepentant ass he's still too nervous to see her, he hadn't rung the doorbell because he hadn't wanted to wake Bonnie, and hadn't wanted to risk meeting her so he's still maybe _guilty…?_ But now is not the time to worry about the marring and saving of Damon's immortaly stupid soul, he's here for something and his mouth is a hard hard line. It's not a social call.

Caroline's stomach drops to her feet, but she tucks her slip around her elmo pyjamas and opens the door to meet him in the clear night air.

She's not ready to see any of the Salvatores, they're going to kill Tyler - it's kind of sad that it's Damon who seeks her out these days, and not Stefan. He hadn't looked her in the eye once during today's practice drill of the 'let's kill Klaus' run in the woods, he hadn't said a proper sentence to her ever since he'd had his crazy cards stamped. Damon's grave, taught as a drawn string, there's an angry energy in the tight line of his shoulders, how his jaw works.

His eyes are low and particularly wary. "Before you ask what I'm doing here, I know." He says, "I can smell him all over the stepford furnishings of your house."

Her heart thudded, she had such a wild heartbeat beating on reflex memory for such a dead girl. "I -"

"Would have said something?" He makes a face, nose wrinkling, eyebrows clenching and looking over all like 'girl, please. I'm tried of your shit.' "So what'd he come here for? A little one-on-one?"

Caroline has to take the anger flaring in her chest and clamp it down before she can slap him a clean one across the face. She takes a fortifying breath, and glares. "Don't you dare," she said, "I would _never -_"

"Whatever." He dismisses, and she's tired of all these interruptions to her explanations. Damon inches a little ways from the door and she follows him down the steps of her porch so they're no longer in the floodlight. "Look, what'd he come here for?"

"He threatened me."

Damon rolled his eyes and they edged into the shadows at the side of her house, her mother was working the late-shift again but Damon was being discrete. "That's all?" When she nodded, he mulled it over in strange thoughtful silence, before. "Maybe it's foreplay?"

"...Excuse me?"

"You heard me," Damon shot back, shrugging his shoulders at the honesty of his statement. "It's a Vampire thing."

Caroline was pretty sure it was a serial-killer thing. "You've got to be kidding me."

"It's a game, see. He's waiting for you to make your next move so he can retaliate in kind," Blue eyes rolling, spectacularly bright even in the dark. "He likes the chase, you give him one whilst occasionally trying to murder him. He finds it exciting, it's all kiss with a fist, and rampant unresolved sexual tension that's supposed to lead to angry fight sex."

"Oh wait, I forgot you're an authority on the matter."

"I, my dear, will take that as a compliment."

"Look, Damon," Caroline throws her hands up into the air, fingers clawing at a thought, weary and irritated. "It's late, I want to go to sleep, and you're end game involves my boyfriend's death."

Damon doesn't look the least bit sorry, but his mouth does a funny little frown/scowl dance and he folds his arms, in his 'this is as serious as I get, honey' pose. She notices now that he doesn't exactly look like he's had a full night's sleep either, his hair's a mess - and not in the stylized, 'just had sex' kind of way - and she's seen his jaw twitch at least twelve times in one minute. The jacket he's wearing needs straightening, and he needs more color in his face. He looks like a grumpy child with a whole lot on his plate and she feels enormously stupid for everything. There's a bigger picture, end justifies the means, there's a bigger picture.

Damon sighs, actually _sighs._ His face almost droopy with his exhaustion, both mentally and physically, he still smells like iron and rust of iron shackles and underneath his aftershave she can still smell the blood. She's being insensitive, and she inches forward, closer to Damon and trying to get the guts to pat his arm or something, because even if he's been the bane of her existence, he's kind of maybe her... _friend_? "Sorry," she mutters, mouth small around the words. "it's just that this isn't how I -"

"Yeah, I know." Damon says, blinking down at her, too tired to be surprised. "We're missing the last stake, and just - just don't go to the dark side."

She knows why he's here now, because it's in her best interests to keep Klaus alive, and it's not in theirs. "We'll find another way, Damon."

He shakes his head. "I seriously doubt -"

"Please," she pleads, and she catches his arm, he winces under her grip but she's too scared of what might happen if she doesn't make him listen. "Please don't, there must be another way. Even if our line doesn't trace back to Klaus, Tyler's still does, and directly too! There's must be another way, one that doesn't involve Tyler dying, Bonnie's going to research some of her family's grimoirs and we'll - we'll think of something!"

Damon doesn't shake her off, "So you're not shacking up as his bodyguard now?"

Damon's here to know that she's not considering a change of sides, because she can't afford to be against them. But she can't afford to contribute to Klaus's ultimate demise either, even if they do find out that their line doesn't originate from him, Tyler's still does. And Klaus being dead is an important goal that decides everything for the Salvatores, it won't be the first time they've killed someone's boyfriend.

"I don't know, I guess I have to, kind of, just - just for now, Damon. Damon please, - please find another way. I'm behind you guys a hundred per cent on everything, you _know_ that, even if I bitch and be a brat about it, but this is something else. This is Tyler. He can't die. Don't _make_ him dead."

This time it takes force to wrench his arm from her fingers. Her heart breaks, and she doesn't care if her eyes are red, and she's about to cry, because this can't happen to her. They can't do this to her. Not this. "We both know it's impossible, the line's what it is," at her expression, he grouses. "We won't make any moves right now, all that matters is finding the stake Mr. Mediocre Minimum Wage hid. Alright?"

She doesn't say anything, and then Damon's saying. "Hey, Barbie. Take it on the chin, sacrifices are sacrifices," the hypocrisy of his statement doesn't even strike him, and she's too busy rubbing the tears out of her eyes to care for anything but an incredulous and pitiful laugh at it.

There's a weight across her shoulders, and it takes her an astonished second to realize that Damon's slung an arm around her, pulling her in for the most awkward hug in the world.

She's cramped against his chest, temples pressed where the zipper of his jacket digs into her skin and her cheeks mushed against the cold material. He pats her head, smothering her hair onto her scalp cautiously. "You're hugging me," she says. "Damon, what."

"Shut up," he sighs, wearily indulging her like she's a child. "I'm trying it out for a change, for practice."

"Wow," she explains, laughter gurgling with her tears in her throat. Hiccuping at the bizzarity. "Damon Salvatore, hugging a girl without trying to get in her pants."

Damon says, "Shut up, you automobile-upholstery wrecking floozie."almost fondly.

* * *

><p>—<p>

.

.

.____  
><em>___Put out a front then you get knocked down, every time you run it follows you around.  
>It's what you needed now, your time is running out<br>And what you needed is what you wanted now____  
><em>___.

.

.

* * *

><p><strong>end note:<strong> alright, i know there wasn't any upfront klaus appearance in this, but there was bromance. bromance always cuts it, right? thank you for everyone who took the time to review this, i hope you haven't all abandoned me since i've been awol or mia or whatever for the past month and didn't get much time to update. i just wanted a little lighthearted sentimental feel for one chapter before getting back to the angsty sexual tension in the next chapter which will be coming out shortly. and even more shortly if i'm motivated aptly enough, if ya know what i'm saying.

and what the ffff - klaus, dessicated? wtf julie plec, like coconut? you've reduced this man to dessicated coconut topping. you break my heart, you break my freaking heart. if klaus is not resurrected by the next episode i will ex-freakin'-plode. like, why does every ship i ship or even presume to _think_ about shipping turn to dust before my eyes? why am i a shipper of doomed ships? it's like you know that if i ship whatever you ship that your ship will never sail, because doomed ships just suck me in and every ship i touch turns to ash and- ugh, i'll stop talking now. what is tv without klaus? ugly sobbing.

tbc

OH, and for anyone who likes the way i write fanfiction, or the style/feel of my writing, then please please PLEASE check out my original story 'the reaper and missus grim' on http(:/)queenofinnuendoI(.)livejournal(.)com(/)9252(.)html - just remove the brackets, also if you have trouble then the main link to my lj is on my profile page, check it out! add me, or whatever it is they call it.


	3. Chapter 3

**disclaimer:** should i even bother?  
><strong>dedication:<strong> for the prompt reviewers (registered and unregistered), i give you an even prompter update! see, i love you guys, your motivation just keeps spurring me on.  
><strong>warning:<strong> there is klaus, and thus by default, eye sex.  
><strong>notes:<strong> dude, i haven't even watched the finale yet, so don't SPOIL me on anything. this is just something of a recap of shit that happened at the dance with various tiny alterations and liberties taken with certain scenes. so call the police.  
><strong>even moar notes:<strong> this is so much more different from the other chapters because it was more snippets, and shorter little bits than a whole long eulogy of daroline!bro! banter. i have so much sexy written down, so much, and i'll post it next chapter regardless of whatever happens in the finale, for my heart will go on, a la celine dion and all that canadian jazz.

* * *

><p>.<p>

.

.

I keep pretending not to care. Oh, the winter scent in her hair  
>compels my hands to do the things my heart wouldn't dare<em>.<br>_I'll keep holding on to you, single years perfecting lives with strangers,  
>if only you, if only now<em>.<br>_

.

.

.

—

* * *

><p>Rebekah takes over the prom committee, <em>her<em> prom committee. Trapezes in and captures the hearts and minds of all Caroline's little helpers with an ease that sends Caroline into fairly inflammatory mood.

Rebekah's a pretty one, she's got _that_ accent and _that_ charm and she's older, faster - but _that_ doesn't make Caroline any less when it comes to being cunning. Sure, she's got every one wrapped around her little British strumpet finger, but Caroline's sneaky too. She wanted to do the 70's, where everyone wears bell bottoms and its all tacky glitter and big haired _fun_ - but _no_, Rebekah wants the 1920's to relive a time that ditched her ass before she could live the last of it through. Caroline wants to say something snarky of it to her but she clamps her mouth shut, stomps out in diva fashion and totally runs off to the woods to meet her boyfriend.

Oh, she'd sold that scene like a _boss_. So what if that had meant letting Rebekah get her way? And maybe leaving Matt at the mercy of her bloodslut preening charms? She was going to see Tyler! Every second she spent away from him knowing he was in town was excruciating water torture.

Electricity runs beneath her skin, she's giddy with expectation, all she wants to do is _see_ him. Let him know how much she's missed him, just run her hands over his face to make sure he's real, that he's okay.

When she turns, in the middle of the wood. The crunch of leaves beneath her feet, she catches sight of him.

Tyler doesn't say anything, looking perfectly content to watch her reaction, and she can't help the tentativeness of her greeting, the sheer_ relief_. "Hi."

"You have no idea," Tyler says at length, "how much I've missed you."

And there it is, _him._ She can _feel_ the way her face breaks open into a wide wide grin, giddy and elated and so many things at once, all over. They meet each other halfway and she finally gets to kiss him, he's steady and warm and he smells like wild Canadian pines. She doesn't remember ever feeling so happy before, all thoughts fly out of her mind as his arms twine around her and she gets to hold him like she's wanted to for so so long. There's something so much calmer to him, the tenderness of the way he holds her comes from something so different from his usual reckless anger and passion, so much _stronger_. It's silly and cliche but she feels like he could hold her forever and ever and never think about letting go.

Soon enough they're pushing back the iron grill of the old Lockwood ruins, and they're running into the dark and he helps throw her jacket into a corner and the rest is history.

It's so much more different than all the times Caroline's done the deed. With Damon it was all teeth and scarves knotted on bedposts and blood on her pillowcase, the one other time she's hooked up with Tyler it had been at Elena's birthday party with tensions running high, and it had been primordial need for a werewolf and a vampire to go at it, a daring risk and all gasps and groans and hisses and laughter.

Here she can't help smiling, she can't help the low flutter in her chest. Like...like _coming home_, or roosting at the end of a long flight. Taking a breather, a drink after a drought, the celebration at the end of an absence.

Caroline's never made love till now.

* * *

><p>It's blissful for a while, at the end. Her curled up against his chest, tracing where his heart beats against his ribcage, leisurely slow. Sated.<p>

She feels warm all over, even in the dank mildew underground. Nothing can spoil this.

But of course, a drama recap was in order.

* * *

><p>She runs into Kol at the Grill.<p>

After he's had his little stint in Denver the younger Original decides to drop in that night and slide into stool next to her. It's the worst possible time for this, _ever_. Matt isn't working tonight, Elena and Damon and Stefan are somewhere sorting out their stupid love triangle, Bonnie was doing some witchy stuff and Tyler was somewhere trying to assure his mom that he was back for good.

Kol looks as pleased with himself as he always does. He wears that cheek cutting smile that slices across his face with Cheshire malevolence, and cuts her a look that is nothing short of leering.

"What's a girl like you, doing dressed like this, drinking _that_?" He wrinkles his nose, the very picture of boyish insolence. "I'd figured you the sober type, but I'm not complaining."

Caroline still hasn't relaxed, she was tense the second she felt him in the room. It's late, past two in the morning, and she'd wanted a drink. Some time for herself.

Unfortunately, privacy is something hard to come by when you lived in a place like Mystic Falls.

"What do you want, Kyle." She drawls, deliberately messing up on his name. That was for questioning her short shorts and her hoodie that was _made_ to swallow her up and hide her from being recognised as a minor at a bar - Caroline liked to drink once in a while, but she'd rather deceive the bartender by_ trying_ (and failing, sometimes) to look older and thus shady rather than stoop so low in compelling him. Compulsion and the way vampires used it like it was going out of style simply put a bad taste in her mouth. - Also, that was for staring at her ass that time she'd had to lure out his stupid brother so the Slavabros could mess up on staking him, again.

"Kol," He says, scowling. "Honestly."

Caroline idly stirs her whisky with a finger. "Uh huh."

He pops an elbow onto the bar top, knuckle pressed against his cheek so he can face the side of her, grinning widely. "Caroline," he pronounces her name in that distinct twang that can't decide whether it's trying to threaten or seduce her. He's a lot like his brother in that aspect. "You almost got me daggered that time."

"Gosh," she fluttered her eyelashes theatrically, ditzy and astounded that she'd ever done any such _thing._ "I am _so_ sorry for trying to put a stop to a family of _maniacs_ who'd kidnapped my _best friend_."

"Justifying violent retaliation? Miss Forbes, has no one told you that an eye for an eye will leave the world blind?"

Oh god, _this_ guy was talking to her about _Gandhi_. She flattened her palms on the table, _beyond_ irritated. "I had no idea you were so well-read Kyle, for a second there I almost thought the peace-loving sentiment genuine! Now if you'll excuse me -"

The glass goes flying off the bartopp, crashing to the floor. Jagged shards of diamond glittering on wine dark wood.

Caroline's rendered suddenly immobile by that horrible sound of destruction, she doesn't dare get up from her seat now.

Kol laughs, a low sarcastic hiss of air between his teeth. "I'm not amused." A white bite of fangs inching underneath his smile, itching to come out. "Sweet Caroline, I thought you'd be smarter than this."

"You're no fun," she says, heart a roar in her ears. Her knuckles turn white on the table, she takes a breath that shudders in her lungs. "No fun at all."

"And rest assured it'll be much less fun if you continue pulling on this silly little stunt of yours." Kol says, sighing mock-resignedly, as if he has no choice. "all the short miniskirts and the thigh high boots in the world can't make me like you now, not after that night. You betrayed us."

"Forgive me if you were so foolish as to presume anything different," She turns on him, scandalised by his brazen stupidity "but I was never _loyal_ to you." .

"But my brother is, loyal to _us_, I mean. His siblings, his _family_." Kol emphasizes, cocking a brow warningly. No one had turned a head when the glass flew, and she didn't doubt that the same lack of reaction would be present if he leaned over and tore out her heart. "Oh, he _thinks_ he fancies you, I know him. He's my brother and I hate him most of the time, who wouldn't?" He laughs, recalling good sibling memories where being daggered for centuries was somehow the acceptable norm. "But you're just another girl, just another face. There's nothing special _about_ you, Caroline."

Something snaps in her, she can feel white hot rage flare suddenly in her, shoot and snap and fizzle like firecrackers in her blood. It's all she can do to keep her breathing steady, the black veins from around her eyes and her fangs civil. It sizzles in her and she wants to tear his face off.

How _dare_ he try and tickle that nerve, to seek out that scar. Caroline's insecurities are notorious enough for an Original to want to play with, but Klaus hadn't - Klaus never did, he thought she was strong, beautiful, and full of light.

Regardless he was _deluded_, but at least he didn't have the _nerve_ to come up to her and call her nothing to her _face._

"Fuck you, _Kyle_." She hisses, looks him fiercely in the face. "You pompous pretentious jackass and your brother complex, leave me the fuck out of it."

Kol is intrigued, he leans is as if gearing for an investigation. Shoulders rolled, curious glint in his eyes, a mean tilt to his mouth. "Oh, I'd be glad to. I like you when your claws come out, Miss Forbes," Her thoughts burn like fire in her brain, and she seriously considers ripping his eyes out. "But rest assured I have my own claws, and they are bigger, faster, older and far more deadly than yours."

"Go to hell, I wasn't born yesterday."

But Kol rises, slipping a hand into his pocket, head bent level to hers. She can feel his breath on her cheek, smell the thick iron tang of blood on his skin, he means business. Business being murder, of course. "You killed my brother," he says softly, "Finn was a whiny little wanker who's idea of a good time was mourning his immortality, but he was my brother. You killed him."

She doesn't deny it, she can't even breathe for the fear.

Just because Kol is younger doesn't make him any less dangerous than any of his other siblings.

Kol straightens, his smile's a little harder, a little crueler. "You're not good for Klaus," and it's all honest, sincere resentment. "you make him stupider than he usually is."

* * *

><p>He comes to steal her away and she can't do a thing to stop it.<p>

One moment _every_thing's perfect, and then the next she can feel frost on the air and Tyler go into a heart stopping still so ominous it makes her feel a shiver coming on. She doesn't even need to look back to know, but there he is; _Klaus_, impeccable in white, a saints color, and it's _beyond_ misleading.

His smile is almost courteous, but there's too much menace in the way he holds himself. A mean glint in his eye, triumphantly tightening his hand on hers and pulling her against him firmly.

Caroline doesn't meet his eyes, staring cautiously and stoic on a permanent point beyond his shoulder. _Determined_ to feel nothing but scorn. There's a sick black pit in her stomach, goosebumps littering skittish on her skin and she tries to make her self seem as resolved as steel while her boyfriend oversees them on the sidelines, completely helpless, she knows how much it kills Tyler. And she hates Klaus for doing this with a resentment that's so vicious it's Damon-ridiculous.

She couldn't enjoy being in Klaus's arms even if she was insane enough to want to.

She hears his heart beat, forces to keep her hand steady on his shoulder, to dance with the grace of an indifferent ballerina rather than the consensual partner Klaus presumes to fashion her to be.

He _says_ things, hand on her back, fingertips ghosting over her skin like he already knows her. Knows how she's going to move, and how to steer her, as perfectly coordinated as two lovers.

Caroline's afraid.

"You would have liked the twenties," he reminisces. She hates how he talks to her, so fond, with an underlying taunt here and there - a smirk as he spins her around, laughs. She shoots him down on cue, but he stuns her again.

He had a habit of doing that.

"You should be nicer to me," he says softer, almost reflectively. Pinpointing at some chink in her armor, playing for a reaction. "I'm leaving tomorrow."

She looks at him sharply, he's so close that she can't not meet his eyes. There isn't any mirth in them, a seriousness that makes her mouth dry. She wonders at the absurdity of her own reaction, at the twist in her chest and the confusion shining in her eyes. He almost sounds accusatory.

It's strange how he makes her skin crawl with shivers, yet her heart thunder.

"I'd invite you out with me, but we both know you're not ready to accept my offer." He says never looking away from her eyes, his hand tightens around her, his arm - a preparation to let go what will return to him, a reminder of his relentless pursuit, the patience of a thousand years waiting to smoke her out of her little corner of the world. If Klaus is anything he is persevering, he is lonely but he is viciously determined to survive himself. Caroline isn't sure she could survive him, let alone this town. "Perhaps one day, in a year or even a century, you'll show up at my door and let me show you what the world has to offer."

His eyes are blue, like the heart of a river. Utterly unreadable in their complexities, the channels of intertwining thoughts and feelings too heavy, too strong, too sharp _not_ to carry her way. Like Klaus would devour her whole, but only if she let him, only if she told him she wanted him to. At the core, he's a gentleman.

Strange behavior for a _murdering_ _psychopath._

She finally breathes out, seeks not to make a single sound. But she _resents_ him, and why should she hide that? Why should she spare his precious feelings when all he is, is a throat ripping _murderer_. All ills can't be traced to be this man, but she's willing to bet that 99% of them can be.

She shakes her head, incredulous. The thoughts he's been trying to put in her head flutter away like frightened butterflies. She can't listen to him.

Caroline scoffs because he's fashioned himself in saint's white, and angel eye's, coming to her smelling clean and pure when he's _poison._

This, however, Klaus does not take well. He lets go of her but he gets closer still, a heat to his words expected from a man who has been scorned again and again.

But Klaus knows where it hurts, and where to slip the knife, which wounds to string open and salt, and he _always_ gets the last laugh.

"Mark my words, Caroline. Small town boy, small town life." He tells her, _warns_ her. There's the rich ominous tone of prophesy in his voice, and it's not so gentle this time. "It won't be enough for you."

She lets him go, watching his lonely back as he carves a path through a crowd. No one hardly notices him, it feels like she's the only person in the world to watch him go, like she's the last person to ever see him again. In a sense it's true.

In a sense, she feels like he's stolen something from her.

It's not her heart, but it's close enough for Caroline to feel it.

* * *

><p>She finds Tyler as soon as she figures out that yet again, a high school dance in Mystic Falls is never <em>just<em> a high school dance. With their track record shit was bound to go down.

Alaric's gone all _Frankenstein_ on their asses and teamed up with Esther - who mind you, managed to jack her own daughter's body - to lock them into school so she could lure Elena out and do some witchy bitch ritual to churn up even _more_ supernatural crap.

Caroline has thought about moving, a lot. But just like Klaus's offers are _his_ pipe dreams (because she would never. Never in a million zillion katrillion freakin' years), moving out is hers. Fun to think about, but impossible.

Klaus is a _delusion_. Tyler is her boyfriend, he's real and he's been through hell and back, for _her_. He _loves_ her.

She couldn't second guess him for the world.

* * *

><p>At the crypts her heart is weighed down, Alaric is her history teacher, and he killed her father - but he's her friend too, not a close friend, but if they'd had time she was sure she could have tried harder with him. He's the anvil to the face of this whole night, and she clutches Tyler's jacket around her, the illusion of safety in a place that wasn't safe at all.<p>

People die too much.

Damon is there too, swigging bourbon. Bonnie and Jamie, Elena and Stefan - even . Everyone is here, it feels like a goodbye.

It's the worst funeral ever.

There's a stinging in her eyes, she can feel the cold on her skin in a strange detached sort of way - as a vampire she was supposed to loose all feeling, but some things survive on the strength and want and need of memory. A memory where all she needed to worry about was doing the itinerary for the masked ball, and making sure no minors crashed the venue for the Founder's ball to hustle champagne.

Her chin wobbles. Alaric takes a look at them all before he closes the gate on them all and retreats into the crypt. He looks tired, haggard around the eyes and he has a defeatist's stoop to his walk - a martyr's strange grace, she thinks, because she can't take her eyes of him disappearing into the dark of a dead dead place.

She leans into Tyler's shoulder, and manages not to cry.

* * *

><p>—<p>

.

.

.

And in the twilight of the south, when fools are mistaken for men;  
>this shadow suits me well, my regrets are faced in the end.<br>I'll keep holding on to you, single years perfecting lives with strangers,  
>if only you, if only now<em><em><br>__

.

.

.

* * *

><p><strong>end notes:<strong> the moral of these long chain of author's notes is 'you smack a bitch with a review and she's more likely to update faster'. and 'smack a bitch with enough reviews, then all your klaroline sexytime dreamzz shall come true.'

i am a damn soothsayer. heed what i say.


	4. Chapter 4

**disclaimer:** for the hundredth time, I own nothing.  
><strong>dedication:<strong> for HANNAH (who just came back from her long stint at the NYS, AND rewarded us with bountiful fics, awesomest of all being a gossip girl tvd crossover. i mean, things have gotten GOOD. all i can say is that it's great for all of us to be back.) and for the REVIEWERS. i love you guys for leaving me your thoughts, so for those i didn't get back to, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR TAKING THE TIME ON ME.  
><strong>warning:<strong> total deviation from cannon events. in my defense i thought the season was going to end a whole lot differently, i didn't see the dessication-turnabout coming around until AFTER i'd decided where i was going with this story, so in spite of this i'm going to be sticking to my guns. the essential things remain the same as they did in the show, with just a few alterations. also ffnet is messing with my line breaks AGAIN. forgive me.  
><strong>notes:<strong> i have bee SUPER busy with 1) studying for my semester exams 2) finishing term papers i procastinated on 3) peicing together a MONSTER of a new first chapter for 'Room on Fire' which is yet to be out and 4) basically worrying about everything and questioning life and pathos and jazz. CONCLUSION: don't give up on me, there's a whole lot of stuff going on in my life right now. Excuse the shortness of this chapter, the next one will be longer and probably the last, i'm hoping it'll wrap everything nicely so i can finish writing up this other Klaroline oneshot I've been meddling with which is a beast itself in length. so yeah. i'm well worth the wait, i hope. ALSO, GO CHECK OUT 'THE ANSWERING MACHINE'. RIGHT NOW. AMAZING BAND. AMAAAAZING.  
><strong>even moar notes:<strong> let's cut to the chase, we came to this page for one thing. for you to read the actual story. so less talking, more reading. bye.

* * *

><p>.<p>

.

.

She's got that look in her eyes, she's got too much on her mind,  
>She wants to relax, she says she thinks that it's time. I know, her fingers taste like home...<br>But she said _'go'!_  
>Oh, just shut up. It's not like that<br>She retracts like a brick wall,  
>But I'm her cracks<br>.

.

.

—

* * *

><p>Caroline raises her glass, hoping she can raise her heart with it.<p>

* * *

><p>She's not really sure where all of this is going, she used to be. Sure, that is.<p>

The teams had been drawn up quite clearly. They were the good guys and the Originals were the bad guys and everything was hunk dory regular in the weekly battle of good and evil.

But then - _THEN_, there was that pesky little metaphorical wrench thrown into the whole deal of things, how she looked at the shit-stirrers that stirred up shit in Mystic Falls and maybe realised that she could somehow understand their motivations. Messing with her moral compass, the bastards.

There was the issue of the gray areas inbetween, things were piling up in the gray scale and Caroline wasn't really sure _what_ to make of it anymore. It started with Damon being a dick and being his slave, and _now_ Damon had changed, done the 180 on her when she wasn't looking. He was still a dick (some things just never changed), a self-entitled ass at that, but he was on the G_ood_ team now. He was still a brooding psycopath, but he'd changed and become more town-friendly in that Caroline and Stefan didn't have to go thanklessly through town burying his meals.

Stefan had done the 180 in turn and become the ultimate bastard with all his ripper dramas coming to the fore, and then coming under no-emotion compulsion and flipping the switch and all the brojazz he had with Klaus. It was weird finding out from Elena that her best-friend, the one who promised nothing would ever happen to her had been a scheming crazy Ripper hanging out in the flapping era and collecting people's blood in _bottles._

_And hell, _Caroline figured,_ the more you know.  
><em>

Recently he was starting to have 'feelings' again. All these emotional switches, and bipolar swings between selfish vampire angst and selfless 'i'm in love with Elena' angst was starting to give Caroline whiplash.

God.

And _then_ there was Elijah, that insufferable rat with all the honor and solemn valour of some Venetian noble man. _Blegh._

Elijah would kind of just slink in to do the 'right thing' whenever it suited him, so if he was noble and all that chivalrous crap like Elena so demanded she have them believe, it was really all lost on Caroline. Even if she was an only child Caroline knew that family always came first, _duh_. Elijah wanted to do the 'right thing', sure, but he couldn't simply destroy his family. When it came down to the end game, Elijah wouldn't blink in putting his siblings above the citizens of Mystic Falls, let alone their rag-tag excuse for the Scooby Gang. Maybe he'd like hesitate when it came to Elena, because he probably wanted in her pants or something, but Caroline didn't feel _that_ assured.

And who _was_ sure that was even the right thing in the first place? Finn, from the snippets she'd overheard Elena and Stefan discussing, was a melancholy kid who just wanted to give up on everything and die. She'd experienced enough from emo Jeremy to tell it in his broody-man walk. So sure, this might have made things easier for the rest of them. She'd been cool with that. Cool with not caring at all until his psycho girlfriend decided to start strangling the Be_jeezus_ out of her - and really, _not cool at all._

The point was, he'd _loved._ He was kind of human too. And so was Rebekah.

She tried not to gag at the thought, but sometimes Rebekah was really still a teenage girl who just wanted to have a teenage girl's prom, in the end. Rebekah (the snarky little _bitch_) was really just a girl who didn't know better than to _be_ a snarky bitch. When Caroline thinks about it, really pushes aside the veils and looks at the bare petty bones, there can't _really_ be something evil about someone who makes doe-eyes at Matt. Because Matt is good and strong and right. He's everything right in Mystic Falls, and Rebekah _sees_ that.

Not that Caroline would ever approve of any potential relationship, pfft. Caroline wouldn't trust Rebekah with a goldfish let alone one of her best friends.

Kol is an ass, that was a given. But he was the littlest brother after all, and really, he just threatened her the other night and she still hated his fucking guts. You do what you do to protect your own.

None of this of course canceled out all the nefarious shit they've done over the centuries, god forbid Caroline be stupid enough to _sympathize._ She can understand, she can kind of realate, but she can't exactly forgive, can she?

It's not her place.

She figures she'd throw a glass of vervain into Klaus's face if he should ever apologize (fat chance he has it in him to regret anything except there was a time I wondered the same thing - and don't, don't, stop it now,) to her, and laugh her freakin' _ass_ off.

But then again, she might not. She doesn't really know what to do with herself when Klaus talks to her, she sticks with being angry, because she _is_ angry, she doesn't care if it's easier. He's the Baddie.

The point is that Ric was supposed to be the Good Guy, he wasn't supposed to fall into the bad slot, to frolic into the no-man's land of morality's gray matters. Metal crashes into her head, and it's like someone's dropped an anvil on her face, and she's going to _die._

She sobs, she pleads, fingers clawing against the gravel as it drags across her body, burns under her skin, she whimpers like a child. She knows what's coming.

It's always her in the torture chair, after all.

Except this time, begging up at the placid calm psycopathic version of Ric - her history teacher, her friend, he's _dead_, he's dead dead _dead._ - she gets the distinct feeling that she might not survive this.

Diamonds in her throat, her own blood splurging up, spiked with adrenaline, fear, _choking_ her.

The cavalry might not arrive in time.

* * *

><p>Klaus is the cavalry.<p>

Stefan and Damon are somewhere in the hall, probably, but it's Klaus with his hand tugging her back, his palm swallowing up her gasping scream. It's Klaus who feels how her body shakes, like a jack rabbit in cardiac arrest. It's Klaus who hushes her, tugs her back and says, begs, demands, _you're safe, it's me. You're safe._

Which, _hello_, is a freaking oxymoron. Because he's _Klaus_, the big bad, she won't ever be safe.

His heart beats against her shoulder, steadier than anyone else's should be, a little skip once or twice, an adrenaline bolt or something. She wants to think he's fearless, but he isn't. He's come here, Ric's got a stake, and sure Elena's the key to his weird doppleganger army or something, but is that really worth dying for?

For a moment she doesn't even think, _hell, _you're_ the one who came for me?_

Because maybe he did, or maybe he didn't. Nows not the time to read into it, to stare into the horse's mouth or whatever. Still, she can't really help everything else because there's this indescribable surge of relief and gratitude that makes her words quake and shiver, Thank you, she says, winded, afraid. And she means it, thank you.

And if his eyes fall on her lips for a tiny second, she's sure she's imagining it. She's certainly not a hot mess in this moment, she's a wreck. A disaster.

He's delving into his own grave here, waltzing into it, she's sure. But Caroline wants to live. The same way Rebekah did, and ditched her for, the want to live.

Klaus can't possibly want her more than that. That's the kind of stupid feeling only a Salvatore could entertain. But she's not going to stare the horse in the mouth - there's hardly enough time or blood in her to give her the strength to even consider other people's motivations or weigh the importance of Elena's safety against her own. Apparently that insecure little twat of a voice is easy to muffle when Klaus's wide hands, tanned and warm close around her shoulders tight enough to bruise. They're warm hands, kind hands, she almost thinks.

Thank you, she says instead. And he lets her go.

* * *

><p><em>Get in the car, Caroline. Don't tell anyone, Caroline. Tell Damon Salvatore; Game on, Caroline. Hey, Caroline, dress up a little and<em> -

She's the go-to girl, she knows. She does what's asked of her and she never questions it, she's never been guilty of insubordination, but then again things hadn't been this bad before. Klaus had fucked up to, he wasn't a good guy, he had a murderer's hands, he'd almost drained Elena. She's pissed off at herself for thinking any differently.

Oh, he'd _really_ had her going.

Bonnie's the one who calls her, brings her the news. She can just see the witch's face, lips pursed, eyes too wary to be relieved. "We dessicated Klaus instead." The low spark of green in her eyes, cool as valley fire. "The Salvatore's are going to be holding him in a storage unit."

Caroline's in the bathroom, her scalp pressed against the tub, the lacerations on her wrists still burning, healing too slowly for her liking.

"What?" And Bonnie sounds as skeptical as Damon in that moment. "No victory dance?"

Her breath catches in her throat, still raw from crying at Alaric to _stop, please stop._ She can barely keep her phone by her ear. This isn't good, Klaus is evil, but Alaric was madness, he hated what she was, would stop at nothing from destroying her. The possibility that he could come back for her, for her mom, for Elena, for _any one of them_ scared the living shit out of her still. The prospect of a Salvatore road trip didn't exactly put her at ease either, what would stop Alaric from finding them then as well?

She clawed at the towel against her chest, felt like she couldn't breathe all over again.

"Hey?" her friend whispers, concerned. "Are you okay? Caroline? I can come over, the offer still stands."

No, that would be unnecessary. Her bathroom tiles swelter in a cloud of lavender scented steam still, she's strong enough to take care of herself, to take care of this. Because the only person who can take care of this _is_ her, no one's going to want to hear her out, certainly not the rest of the gang, she'd have more luck trying to get Damon sober.

It was going to be sundown soon, Alaric was going to be out on the rampage soon. Caroline needs to get a move on.

"Bonnie, this isn't good. This isn't good at all."

A sigh greets her on the receiver, a billowing release of; "God, this is as far from right as possible. Klaus is an asshole, but Alaric's the greatest threat at the moment."

They're sitting ducks. And it makes sense, even though Klaus would have drained Elena, the fact remains that everyone is going to die if Klaus dies. You can't shoot the target without the gun. Now Klaus is the sitting duck, they don't even have the hope of hinging their survival on his ability to run anymore, because he isn't even a moving target. Alaric's the gun, and he's locked and loaded and ready to end them all. There's a definite chance that the big Ol' hybrid is their sire, and Caroline doesn't want to risk it, can't risk it.

The mere thought of Klaus just sitting their in a coffin while Stefan and Damon road trip across Virginia, just sitting and waiting to get the Bejeezus staked out of him now he's a 'beef-jerkified' - Damon's getting less witty by the day - Original lugged about like luggage sets her crazy with fear. It's all well and good to rely on Damon and Stefan to kill people who mean them harm and hide the bodies, or teach her how to compel her teachers into excusing her absences, but _this_ is a burden she can't risk giving them the opportunity to mess up on.

She always does what she's told. She'd told Tyler not to come see her, that she was okay, that she'd meet him at Elena's house. She wanted to see if Elena was okay, she didn't want anyone to see her broken and bleeding, she didn't want anyone to see her like that ever again.

She's not going to let this kill her. She's not going to be the good baby-vamp and just sit on her hands and wait for them to get it over with.

"Care," Bonnie's frown travels on a wire, the furrow of her brows when she's getting skeptical. "What are you thinking?"

"I need your help, Bonnie." Caroline decides, biting on the heel of her palm anxiously as she speaks. "I can't trust anyone else."

There's a pause, a long pause that makes Caroline feel like she's stupid, obviously, Bonnie can't help her. It's too dangerous to just jump into this, to even confirm that they're not necessarily in agreement with the current Quid-Pro-Quo. But she really needs a friend right now, and even if that's selfish, even if her motivations are selfish she really needs someone to tell her that that's okay. That it's okay for her to want to save someone else that isn't completely isolated to Elena, that she might want to save Tyler too. Her heart seems to stifle, and it all rises up in tears she can barely keep from pushing out of her eyes. God, she's cried enough to last a lifetime.

Bonnie has to understand, they're friends. They have people to protect, Jeremy, Abby, Liz, Matt, everyone else. She's not out of line, she dares someone to tell her she is. She isn't.

Bonnie answers. "I'm dropping Jeremy off at his house." She hears her purse her lips, and then the brisque rushed "I'll be there, Caroline." That indicates that they can't talk any further right now because the car door just clicked and Jeremy's in the car. "I'll see you, then. I promise."

_Hang in there, I'm here. I'm going to listen._

Caroline gets up after the call snaps, pushing hair from her face and putting on one of her smiles. She buttons on a shirt, and does what she does best, goes to plan a victory party.

* * *

><p>—<p>

.

.

.

She's got that blood in her eyes, she's got that blood on her thighs  
>She wants to react, but she can't cut her ties. I know, her fingers taste like bone<br>But she said 'no'!  
>Just shut up. It's not like that<br>She retracts like a brick wall  
>But I'm her cracks<p>

.

.

.

* * *

><p><strong>end notes:<strong> short update is short. but i have a presentation tomorrow in school, and i really need to sleep. the lyrics are from 'lightbulbs' by the Answering Machine. and i finally got to write in some bonnie, which was super difficult, btw.

leave me any thoughts? :)


	5. Chapter 5

**disclaimer:** i own very little.  
><strong>dedication:<strong> for the END of this fic, yay! it's dooooooone.  
><strong>warning:<strong> kind of a completely shoddily done ending with a dubious plot alteration. just go with it, even if it feels a little wrong, we'll ease into it - OH GOD NO, I SOUND LIKE A CREEPY SEX FIEND. NOT INTENTIONAL. (blame hannah, she's a bad influence). and don't be lazy, check out my other fics, please. also, bonnie is completely ooc, but screw this, she needs to just snap and flip the fuck out on damon once in a while. where was the bonnie who dealt out vamp-migranes on an hourly basis? i miss that bonnie.  
><strong>notes:<strong> blegh. i literally do not care right now. i am so darn tired. and whateves. like i honestly don't understand my lyric caption choices for chapters anymore, it all used to be so much simpler.  
><strong>even moar notes:<strong> cutting to the chase right now. read, and review, please. kthxbai.

* * *

><p>.<p>

.

.

So you're feeling tied up to a sense of control and make decisions that you think are your own.  
>You are a stranger here, why have you come?<br>Why have you come? Lift me higher, let me look at the sun  
>Look at the sun and once I hear them clearly, say<br>"Who, who are you really and where are you going?" I've got nothing left to prove,  
>Cause I've got nothing left to lose. See me there waiting for you<br>"Who, who are you?"  
>.<p>

.

.

—

* * *

><p>She finds a man no younger than twenty-three in a diner by a gas station somewhere far from Mystic Falls but never far enough, it always seems. Caroline marches across the gravel in her heels, breath misting in front of her in the chilled dark air, with her blood thrumming beneath her skin.<p>

She's a terrible person. She's a terrible friend for being ready to do this, a hypocrite really. It's not like she's really going to be hurting the guy forever anyway, it's just a onetime thing. She rolls Jeremy's ring around in her pocket, the metal of it seems old and grave, like something that Gollum would ferret away. Or maybe she's been watching too many movies from the times she used to hang out with Matt.

There's a surge of guilt then when she thinks about Matt, when she spots the boy through the glass windows along the bars of the diner, looking in from the outside, numbed from the cold. Matt was just a great normal guy, and he'd probably be disappointed in her, for picking up some poor boy in Virginia and using him for this supernatural shit again.

Screw that, he'd probably never even talk to her again once he found out she'd practically backstabbed every one like a complete and total _traitor._

Her phone buzzes in her pocket, Caroline knows it's Bonnie probably telling her to get a move on, so she does. Ignoring the thing and choosing instead to pull her hands out of the pockets of her leather jacket and do this thing, she doesn't want to touch the phone or the ring right now.

She takes a fortifying breath, pushes her hair back from her face and finally pulls open the door. The bell above her jingles, there aren't many people in the diner, her boots squeak against the flaking linoleum floor as she turns looking for the Not-Matt boy again.

Because he isn't Matt, he doesn't look anything like Matt. She doesn't even know why she picked him in the first place. He's gone back to wash dishes or something, Caroline's super-hearing tunes in on the sound of water rushing, of voices of the coworkers bemoaning the hour in the kitchen.

She should hurry up, a few lone truckers raise their brows at her but they mind their own business, no matter how strange it is to see a pretty seventeen year old dressed to kill at three o'clock in the morning on the highway out.

Caroline takes a booth where she still has a clear view of the kitchen area, waits for the boy. She hadn't chosen him for sentimental reasons, she rationalizes, the truckers were old men with cholesterol issues and though no one would notice them missing Caroline couldn't risk getting them legit killed in the actual procedure.

Not-Matt looks tired when he comes out, he's pale in a way that suggest to Caroline that he doesn't eat much, or can't afford it. (And in this economy who can?) He has a droll unexpectant look to his eyes, that suggests to Caroline that he can't afford to go to college either, and she's scared for Matt when it comes to that, because Matt doesn't have the liberty (and doesn't want it) of living forever to just forgo things like college. And these are probably all just half assed assumptions she's making, but Caroline likes to think she knows people, that she has an idea about them. Even when those ideas come to bite her in the ass or try to court her and make her their bride or whatever.

He comes to her table finally, and mutters some sort of customary greeting, asks what she'd like.

Caroline looks up, and she can't lie. Her hands _do_ shake a little. He looks so damn mediocre and normal that the old part of her that still pretends she's not undead aches.

His nametag says Ryan, or Roy, Robin or something else. Caroline can't really tell, it's a blur she doesn't want to read, she doesn't _want_ to know his name and have it haunt her for the rest of her existence. If she outlives tonight then she wants to live, not remember Roy and the way she used him.

"Ma'am," he says, dull as the pull of water up a straw. "Ma'am, what'll you have?"

Caroline looks into his eyes, and they're bluegreenbrownsomething, she thinks. She has to do this. The forks by her hand rattle on the surface of the table, she has to bundle her hands back into her lap just so she can stare at him straight and not cry, or say sorry, or beg this complete stranger to please understand why she's essentially taking apart his mind.

Instead, she says. "Hello," She feels the slow pull of her compulsion settling, like drawing blood from a vein it's so phenomenally easy to tap into a mind, it's _wrong_. "I can't promise that you're not going to die, but I'm going to try, alright?"

* * *

><p>Bonnie snaps her phone shut, follows by Damon's side, tuning out his annoying monologue of snark with the clock ticking wildly in her head. The drafty storage unit is practically empty, and she really does not want to know why Damon even has a shed in here in the first place. Must be storing outdated cognac and stripper heels from the 50's.<p>

Alaric was on the prowl and Stefan had doubled back for Elena, leaving Bonnie alone with Damon. The universe was giving her a goddamn opportunity and she was going to take it.

Damon lolled a sarcastic little smirk at her, and she sneered on reflex because it was expected in response to whatever condescending thing had rolled off his tongue. Damon bought into it.

What the hell was taking Caroline so long?

Her phone beeps and she flicks it open again, Damon stops and scowls at her, like she's wasting his super important time of whatever.

_Done_, it says.

"You're looking awfully distracted, mind not here?" Damon drawls, they've stopped in front of the shed, the first spark of suspicion.

Okay, she's done this before. Lie, and the rest. And she's also K.O'd Damon enough times to be conversant with doing it on a whim.

It's like they _pay_ her or something.

"Weren't you idiots supposed to throw him into the ocean?"

"Blegh." Damon says, like it's an actual word.

"So this is it?"

"So who're you texting?"

"None of your business." She practically hisses, but then Damon's looming, getting all up in her personal space and he's not as big of an idiot as he looks. Not right now, anyway. So yeah, maybe she panics, but she's been panicking since the beginning of the year and this need to freaking end right now.

"Bon-Bon," he says low, the kind of low that normally precedes an episode of neck-snapping. "Are you going to screw this up?"

She almost laughs. That's _rich. _Years of rage, and being everybody's bitch just boil beneath the surface of her skin and it is _so_ on. Because screwing things up are a Salvatore perfected trade! And all she's ever done is protect Elena, and her way is the best way and the _only_ way to do it.

So she has no regrets whatsoever when Damon clutches his head with the migrane that would have split his brain in half if he didn't have super healing powers. Vampires, Bonnie almost rolls her eyes, pushing him against the shed wall with enough force to break his skull.

She doesn't even feel sorry. It's _Damon._

"Don't call me that, you bastard."

* * *

><p>She divests him of his phone, his wallet, and his shoes – just to make him feel a little more uncomfortable whenever he finally gets around to waking up. Besides a pretentious douche bag without his pretentious Italian leather is like a Greaser without his hair gel, she's pretty sure it constitutes as half of his power.<p>

Bonnie drags his body into another empty shed, works quickly before he wakes. Sets up a boundary that would make the Origi-bitch proud and traps the motherfucker in there.

When Damon wakes he can shout and scream all he wants, but no one will hear him, no one will be able to contact him.

Caroline comes in with a dazed teenager halfway after Bonnie's done setting cement over Klaus's body. She hovers in the doorway, doesn't go in. "You got rid of Damon?"

"Trapped in aisle B3."

"He can't get out?" Caroline sounds apprehensive, and Bonnie can tell she's been crying. "What if Ric –"

"No one can get in, either." Bonnie clarifies, muttering latin under her breath to make the mold around Klaus's (Ugh, _ew_.) icky desiccated body harden. "So he's safe."

Of course, the spell weakens in time, so it's not exactly fool-proof. Alaric could get any other witch to undo it, which is why Bonnie hadn't used it as a first option when it came to locking away Klaus's body from Ric's reach.

It's done. Klaus has a really unnerving stare, it's creepy. Bonnie glares just as hard while Caroline brings the kid in. He's already wearing Jeremy's ring.

Caroline takes a deep breath and comes close to the coffin, heels abnormally loud, echoing all through Damon's storage space. Bonnie gives her credit for not jumping out of her skin when Klaus's gaze fastens on her.

"Is he going to be alright?"

"This is the first time he's wearing the ring, killing him once won't cause any personality disorders like it did with Rick. But we have to work fast."

"I'm not sure he'll even make the deal."

"It's the only option we have, Care. Better a moving target than a sitting duck, and he sure as hell knows it." She looks sorry for a moment, lips clamping together. "You'll be making the biggest sacrifice, Caroline. I wish you wouldn't have to, I wish there was another way."

"Yeah," Caroline smiles, small and faithless. "Wishes and horses and all that. Just don't think I'm a martyr or anything, Bonnie. Please?"

Caroline takes a deep breath, moves closer. She sets her hand onto Klaus's chest, it feels cold, like stone. She can't feel any human beat over there, the blood lays stale and dead in his veins, frozen cold.

"Let's do this," Bonnie determines, heaving a breath, "Let's do this our way."

* * *

><p>The world swims up, and he can't go up with it, there's hot water on his tongue, like salt water, the acrid foam of an ocean wave. <em>Blood,<em> he wants to form the words but his throat's stuck, a corridor of dust. He could move, but his arms stick, the coffin sticks. He's trapped.

The irony is not lost on him, Bekah would have laughed, a smile like a bite of the moon. "How'd you like it now?"

But the gold haloing around her head, in curls that would make goldilocks green with envy lets him know this is a different kind of girl entirely. The kind of girl he can't have, she won't let him have her.

She's pale, her lips look bloodless. He could hear them talking before, the sounds coming from their lips like murmurs from another room that he couldn't possibly decipher, he can't hear Caroline yet, not until he tries to move and the heart that's just started beating in slow, retching, lurches in the most god-awful way. Tears him up from navel to throat.

She has his heart in her hand, her nails dug _just_ so into the flesh and he tries to summon up a laugh because _isn't this just dandy_? Isn't this a little shred of poetic justice? _She's got his heart in her hands._

"Listen," Caroline says, low, "Apparently you people have honor, and apparently if you die then we're all going to kick it as well."

She takes a shuddering breath. "You try to move and Bonnie's going to unstart your heart again and we'll throw you in the ocean like we originally planned."

That little witch, no wonder, he's _bleeding_ out from the hot sticky cavity in his chest. She's right there up on his list next to Stefan Salvatore, right up there, and there's nothing but murder screaming through his veins, and rage, and fear – no, he would have flinched, never fear. He's not afraid.

Caroline is, her fingertips shake, he can feel it like an electric charge hooked up to the red muscle in the cage of his ribs.

That maybe terrifies him, her ability to _do_ these things to him.

It terrifies him that she can see him in a glance and take him apart just as easily, that her eyes will always put him through a torture more violent than vervain or sunlight. She'd tear him apart as easily as he'd torn apart others.

He moves his lips, _what do you want?_ And it hurts in the most painful way, drawing air into his throat, for the words to scrape out of his voice box, weak and no stronger than a whisper.

Caroline leans in, over his body, her hair tickles his shoulder, lays in heavy gold coils. He wants to draw his useless hands into her head and dig and dig in the most ferocious, most wanting of ways. She wrinkles her nose distastefully, pulls a lock behind her ear so his lips are just a breath from her skin. So she can catch his words better, not even vampire hearing can collect on the words of this quiet death rattle sufficiently enough.

_What_, his lips twitch and pull, he doesn't like this being feeble and old and with enough anger to set the world afire and not being able to. Stefan, he wants to rip his throat out, he wants to cut him up and hang him on the wall, and make Rebekah cry enough for the both of them. _Do you want?_

"To live," Caroline says, pitching her words so they're only for him. "To keep my friends safe."

_Martyr,_ he accuses, as if it repulses him.

"So you know the terms?"

He doesn't make a move to say anything to that.

"Bonnie will set you free, and you can go wherever you want, run to wherever you want. All you have to do is leave Mystic Falls and never come back, you run to all those places and you make sure Ric doesn't find you." She inhales sharply through her nose, a child gearing himself to throw his very first punch. "And I'll – I'll come with you, and you leave Elena alone."

He bears his teeth, wordlessly showing exactly what he thinks of _that._

"You can have your family, your _real_ family – Elijah and Kol and _Rebekah_. And I'll go with you, wherever you like. Elena will marry someone, she'll have kids, she'll continue the doppelganger line. Let her die of old age, give it eighty years, because Ric expires with her. He'll die just when she does. All we need to do is wait."

_Why?_ He doesn't have to say it, his eyes do, and it accuses again. _Why?_

"You saved my life once," She says simply, but she can't summon up a smile, her hands adjust around his heart and his gasp catches in his throat, lodged like a stone, "some might think that warrants me giving you an opportunity to take back yours."

He doesn't want her like this, it makes him no better than Katerina, the _whore._

He'll be a warden, and she a prisoner, and she'll be _miserabl_e. She doesn't _want_ to come with him, she never would, not in a million years.

Caroline watches his eyes like they're a spectre about to disappear between the trees outside her window. Searches them like he might vanish.

_No_, he could say, _No, I can't._

She could never love you.

"Caroline," the witch hisses from somewhere, "Caroline, we have no time."

Caroline purses her lips, a grim line of fortitude, eyes darting to his mouth. Speaks without meeting his eyes then, it's too much of a feat for her. "I'll be with you, and I'm not much, I know. But my loyalties will be to you, and I – I can't promise you anything, Klaus, please, just. You can't die." She meets his unblinking stare again. Her face pinched white, her mouth trembles, like flower petals growing at the very precarious end of branch in a rattling wind. "You're supposed to take me places, remember?"

He wants her, more than he's ever wanted anything in his life. More than he wanted Tatia's heart, more than the lingering firelight on the slopes of Katerina's naked flesh. He wants Caroline the way he had the night he came into her room, the agonizing burn of her defiance, the sting and pull of the challenge in her words, the mass of her curls swerving around her face. Her grin, her insolence, her anger, _everything._

He wants it all.

So when she asks, "You're a man of honor, and you keep your word. You have to promise me you'll keep your word. Do we have a deal?"

Klaus, tension pooling beneath his muscles, filling him like molten steel, straining violently, viciously hating his own weakness, he mouths the word, _Yes._

* * *

><p>Bonnie brushes off the kid, and Caroline helps a blood-starved Klaus who's much to weak to move himself into the car outside. It's Damon's. Today is probably not his day, today is a Mystic Falls national holiday probably, because the Grinch finally got his ass handed to him, maybe.<p>

Damon swears, cusses that singe her ears, when he sees Caroline helping a hobbled Klaus out of the containment facility. Beating at the sides of his own. "I am going to rip you apart, Blondie. You too, witch."

Caroline's jaw tenses, but she ignores him. She looks over the kid she'd picked up. He's still alive, a little shaken, but no worse for wear, _thank god._ Caroline compelled the diner kid to go home and forget about everything after Bonnie's slid the ring off his finger and pocketed it.

Damon sneers when he catches the glimpse of silver. "Gilbert Jr. was in on this, was he? Or you stab him in the back too?"

"If you don't shut up," Bonnie says, as pleasant as she can get at this hour in this kind of company. "I'll stab you in the _face._"

Damon snarls, and it reminds them all of how not long ago he'd tried to kill them all at some point. His teeth are still as sharp, and his soul might as well be just as black.

"You can't hold me forever."

"I won't," Bonnie says, Caroline standing beside her with her arms folded. "I'm holding you just until these guys get far away enough."

"Alaric could get here any second –"

"Jeremy and Matt aren't as useless as you think," Bonnie sneers, angry on their behalf. "They're distracting him."

"With a unified strip tease?" Damon barks acidly, "Yeah, good fucking _luck_."

Caroline snaps her fingers around Bonnie's wrists before she makes good on her threat and stabs Damon in the face with one of the snooker sticks lying around, or exploding his brain into a thousand flecs of blood and bone with one of her Bennet Aneurisms.

"Good bye, Damon," Caroline says, instead, in a dry voice that doesn't seem her own at all. "See you on the flipside."

"Ha," Damon says, "but, oh, _wait_, you just sold your body to the devil. Don't make a promise you can't keep, Blondie. You've really dug yourself one this time."

Damon's look of disgust almost makes her feel guilty, has a bite to it that turns her stomach over, to think they'd almost been friends. In spite of herself she can feel her eyes sting with tears.

"We had to, Damon."

He scoffs.

"He's just jealous we had a plan that actually worked and we didn't let them in on it." Bonnie says, sounding like Damon herself, that same airy condescending tone she was intentionally going for. "This plan was Salvatore proof, Care. But it isn't done until you've left. Where's Klaus?"

"In the car." She'd been all packed since the night Ric tried to kill her, and she was relieved that it was almost coming to an end. "We're leaving immediately."

"Car?" Damon echoes, blinking.

"Yeah, I liked yours better than mine. But don't worry, I'm just using it for a bit, we'll park it on the side of some road when I switch to another car. It's temporary."

Bonnie throws her arms around Caroline, whispers fiercely. "I'll get you out of this, Care." While Damon hisses expletives, "My car, why you little –"

"No," Caroline says, tugging her fingers into Bonnie's shoulders in a desperate way, clutches because letting go is the worst part of a hug, it's the absolute _worst_. "Don't. I'll write, I'll contact you, I'll come around. I made a promise," she shot Damon a meaningful look over Bonnie's head, "I'll keep it."

She holds on for as long as she can, when she lets go she throws a watery smile at the both of them, flees.

* * *

><p>Klaus's skin is almost gray in the dull light of the car, and they're not out of dodge yet, so she keeps glancing at him, makes sure he's tucked in tight into the seat, belted right and safe. He's too weak to sit up straight, and she won't give him any blood until she's sure they're out of the thick and far, far away from Virginia and all surrounding states.<p>

He's been silent this whole time, let her handle him, put him in the car like a child. Watched the night pass by with the window rolled down.

Caroline's blood flows in anxious stutters in her veins, she knows she'll have to feed him soon, she can't keep him weak forever. It's no better than leaving him desiccated, he doesn't even have the strength to defend himself.

He's weak, but not to weak to speak it seems. Because he does, when the horizon is lit in the angry red of the coming son, and makes the glass of the car tint in wild bloody orange.

"Boyfriends not tagging along?"

Her hands tighten around the steering wheel, crackling into the old leather of the car she'd hotwired after she'd ditched Damon's on the street. She hadn't had time to break up with Tyler, Bonnie said she'd talk to him for her. Caroline had even tossed her phone out of the window, gotten rid of anything that could trace their location.

Tyler had to run as well after Ric snitched on them, they were supposed to do it together. Her head ached, her body felt sore and tired. She was supposed to run with him. Like, eloping, or something. Caroline's eyes hurt, burn in the glare of sunlight, until the road is only a long stretch of blurry gray. This is what running looks like, she thinks, a road leading to nowhere, forever and ever and ever.

"No," She swallows, every time she thinks about Tyler she feels like someone's scooped a hole out of her heart, and she has to get used to that. "Not that it's any of your business, but I don't have a boyfriend anymore."

He laughs, a dry thing that sounds like a cough more than anything, rumbles in the back of his throat and wheezes through his parted lips. He's less dead than before, but not very alive either, not yet.

Caroline bites the inside of her mouth, refrains from hissing at him. Because she chose this. They could have stuck with the Salvatore plan, and everything would have ended up as screwed as fuck, but she still wouldn't have ended up here. Sharing an enclosed space with this bitter, vibrant with all the colours of scorn, individual.

She'd done the right thing. Like hell she would regret it.

"What were you thinking?" He wants to know, sobering up quickly enough.

"I told you –"

"Yes, you did. All that self-sacrificing rubbish," Klaus says, turning away from the window and looking directly at her in that impatient, discriminate way of his. Looking for the catch, for the trap door, saving them both the trouble. He smiles, a nasty little smile that has Caroline's guts knotting and roiling. Waves upon waves of self-loathing rolling over her. "You darling saint, you perfect little martyr, so bloody _sly_. You're to suffer my company forever, are you?"

"Not forever." Caroline says.

He frowns, brows pinching. Not understanding the cool assertion. "No?"

"The deal we made said forever, but we both know it won't come to that. I'll be here as long as you want me. I know what you are Klaus," she says simply, explaining in a clear and concise manner that speaks of well-established Encarta fact, "you'll tire of me eventually, and you'll find something else to distract you, something else more fascinating than a girl like me. Soon I'll bore you just the same as the others did. And you won't want me anymore, and you'll let me go."

"Just like that?" Klaus prompts, malice turning his grin sour. "Will I?"

She shrugs, eyes focused nonchalantly on the road. "Yeah."

He slams his foot clear through the floor boarding, she yelps, sparks hiss across the bottom where the metal scrapes across the tarmac rushing beneath them. Caroline stomps down on the brakes, the car careens as she tries to get control of it, to stop it. Her heart jumps into her throat, because he just shoved a foot through the fucking _car_, and the cars barely rocking on its tires as it stops before Klaus is tearing into her the sleeve of her arm, and pulling her bodily. She cries out, because it hurts.

"You haven't a clue, have you?" the sunlight glancing off the ridges of his cheekbones, harsh red, and his eyes are blue as the storming punches of waves she has to roll with. Terror isn't the only thing that lodges her words in her throat, because Klaus – _Klaus_ is looking at her, and it's a look that burrows beneath her skin and steals into her bones, and he's close, he's pulled her half the way towards him, the knobs on the radio digging into her ribs, his lips are close enough to steal the very wisps of her life from her. He whispers again, she watches his adam's apple bob hard in his throat, and he shouldn't look like this, like a boy, injured by the errant cruelty of her words, instead of the man with the snarl and the penchant for sticking daggers into the hearts of his immediate family.

"You have no idea, Caroline." He says, yearning violently towards her, hands fisting into her hair as her heart runs a mile a minute. "I'm never letting you go, I'm never going to get tired of you, I'm not a child. Remember? You're not a momentary fancy, I told you that before. I'm not a fickle Salvatore with their revolving doppelgangers. I'm not a fool."

"I don't –"

He cuts her off before she admits it, before she says the word. "You don't have to," he says, the anger burrows beneath his words, makes them like a sigh. "But I want all of you, not morsels, not glimpses, everything."

"You can't have all of me. I'm not a horse, something you can own, I'm not a pet. I can't pretend to feel things that I don't – "

But her breath shudders against his lips, and he can taste the agitated, anxiousness in the air. He can hear her heart.

"You can't." He agrees, her eyes dart down when he wets his lips, dart away just as quickly, her cheeks heat up red. He feels his starvation acutely, a hunger gnawing at him when he looks at Caroline, a raw heat beneath his quiet proclamation. "But I, just as you, can't pretend to not feel the things that I do. I'm quite taken, you see, Caroline, and I've wanted – I've wanted…well, let's just say that the very notion of keeping this off any longer destroys me."

His mouth is searing, red hot, and the kiss isn't tender at all. It's ferocious as a heat wave, makes cracks in the earth's floor, dries out the very oxygen from the space, and steals her consent from her lungs, makes firecrackers in her head, firecrackers behind her eyes.

Caroline can't breathe, can't breathe, can't _breathe._

"All of you," Klaus says, "Everything."

He steals from her, this time, she doesn't stop him. Caroline curls her fingers into his hair, nails biting down into his scalp because she's stolen everything from him, and he figures, these are just desserts.

And he gives just as good as she takes. Always.

* * *

><p>—<p>

.

.

.

Now you're moving on and you say you're alone. Suspicious that this string is moving your bones.  
>We are the fire, we see how they run, see how they run, lift me higher, let me look at the sun.<br>Look at the sun and once I hear them clearly, sayl  
>"Who, who are you really? And where are you going?" I've got nothing left to prove<br>Cause I've got nothing left to lose. See me there waiting for you,  
>See me there waiting.<p>

.

.

.

* * *

><p><strong>end notes:<strong> so people just sort of bitterly ride off into the sunset, and i'm exhausted. thank you everyone who read this, for taking your time! i now need to sleep. the end. because idec what right now. like what the hell is wrong with these two. why can't they just end a story properly, they make it so hard for me to tie things off. blegh.

just,_ blegh._


End file.
